Chapter 3
Very quickly, it became clear to me that Solaris was not a runner. He might be lean and tall, but he was totally out of shape. I’d bet my backpack that he’d always flown whenever he’d needed to get somewhere fast.
“Where are we going?” I kept pace with him because I couldn’t just abandon him.
“Away,” he said between panted breaths.
Maybe he didn’t have any idea where we were after all. Part of his bitchiness was probably because I had given him a really crappy day, but maybe he was just as lost as I was.
Before I could bring that up, though, I recognized the sound of horse hooves pounding the ground. Looking back, I saw four guys on horseback racing toward us.
I could also see the fire darkening the sky a lot more than the clouds were.
“Sol! What’s happened to your wing?”
Each of these riders was, quite literally, his own color. The one who’d spoken was pink. Everything he wore was one shade of pink or another from vest and shirt to knee-high socks and pointy-toed shoes. Blue, red, and purple were the other three guys’ colors. Solaris was green.
Were they some kind of merry band of fairies? Er, fae?
I also realized Solaris was the only one with wings and, hey, his friends did call him Sol.
“I fell on him,” I said to all of them. “Came through a fairy ring—that I’ve since learned isn’t supposed to exist because of the curse—and crashed right into him in midair.
I’ve done what I can to stabilize his wing, but if you have a better way of doing it or some medication for pain, please help him out. ”
After a lot of blinking, which I understood completely, Pink offered, “The village is just a few more miles that way. I’m sure they’ll have an apothecary.”
An old-timey pharmacy instead of a doctor? Well, it wasn’t my world.
I touched Sol’s elbow. “Who do you want to ride with? I’ll help get you up so you don’t move too much.”
For a second, I thought he wanted to punch me. Maybe he did. Instead, he got up behind Pink in a way that looked like they’d done it plenty of times. And then he might as well have punched me.
“Let’s go,” he said, and damn if the other colors didn’t ride away.
Without me.
A fire at my back, a village still at least a couple miles away, and that cranky little shit up and left me standing there. Not one of them even looked back at me.
“Fuck you, Sol!” I screamed. “I hope your goddamned wing heals crooked! I hope you spend the rest of your life flying in circles!”
As much as I wanted to keep hurling insults at him, I was starting to smell smoke. I could run a few miles. Not at a horse fleeing a fire speeds, but I could move. I put my backpack on and got going.
Rage was a great motivator because what the hell was wrong with that fucking guy? Sure, I’d fallen on him, but it hadn’t been my choice to do that. And though I’d helped him out of guilt and a hope that he’d help me back, was that really so bad? He’d needed me, and I’d needed him.
If I caught up to his scrawny little ass in the village, I’d see what else I could break. On all of them. Fuck him and his colorful band of idiots.
When I could finally see the village, I slowed down to a jog. A wide path of bare dirt stretched in opposite directions, and I realized that might be a natural fire barrier. There were also mounds of dirt at least waist high every now and then, like those, too, might help cut off a brushfire.
At the last mound before walking into the village, I stopped to watch a guy standing on some kind of wide plow as two horses pulled it forward.
He was renewing the dirt path, the fire literally fizzling out at the edge of the dirt as he drove past. No alarm from the man.
Not even a flick of an ear from the horses.
So, yeah, folks around here were used to this happening and prepared for it.
All of a sudden, the clouds that had started all this belched out a rainstorm that lasted just long enough to wet the shoulders of my t-shirt before it was over. I tried not to bitch even in my thoughts since that might’ve helped put the fire out, but ugh, I hated wet clothes.
Taking the last swig of water from my water bottle, I glanced around at the nearby shops.
The ones lining the dirt road I was on all looked like wherever in Ireland they had filmed Waking Ned Devine, one of my favorite movies.
Some of the stone-built thatched buildings were whitewashed and others were bare gray limestone.
The odd thing was that most of the buildings had tarps on their roofs, as if their thatching was damaged and— No, wait. The tarps were angled down to barrels. Were they collecting rainwater? Damn, the drought around here must be serious.
There was a pub up ahead. Though the sign wasn’t in a language I could read, the toasting beer mugs were a universal symbol. And I supposed that was as good a place as any to get information—bartenders knew their stuff.
On the way there, I nodded at the people who stared.
Men and women were going about their day in old-timey clothes that were patched but clean, like they were struggling but still had their pride.
It was clear they didn’t get a lot of visitors, though, especially human ones wearing hiking shorts because I was pretty sure my bare knees were causing a stir.
Given that all the women wore skirts, I was starting to feel like I’d gone back in time in addition to elsewhere in the universe.
And then I realized that everyone had pointy ears, but no one had wings. Could they be hiding them? Solaris had been actively using his and then hurt one, so maybe he’d left them out for that reason. I refused to believe he was so special only he had wings.
The second I walked into the pub, I spotted Solaris and his followers sitting at a table eating and drinking like they hadn’t abandoned me to a brushfire.
My first instinct was to march over and punch him in his pretty little face.
But I had a feeling, with a guy like him, that ignoring him completely would sting way worse.
I walked toward the bar at the back of the room, my eyes slowly adjusting to the dim golden light from globe sconces with flames dancing inside them.
Was electricity out of reach, or were they avoiding it for the aesthetic?
I nearly tripped over my own feet as a horrible thought occurred to me.
Did they have flush toilets? Was it chamber pots or outhouses? Oh, god.
“Well, well,” the rickety old man behind the bar said as he eyed me up and down with a pair of sunken blue eyes. “Haven’t had a human in here in an age.”
I reached over the bar to offer him my hand. “Wallace Crowne. Nice to meet you.”
“Lars Bodach.” He shook hands with me. “What brings you to the edge of Summer?”
“The edge of Summer?”
“Mmm,” he said with a nod. “Trilgare is the last village before the Fields of Gibford that stretch to the Forest of Buxwick at the center of the courts.”
“I might’ve just come in from the Fields of Gibford, then.” I pointed the way I’d come into the village, and he nodded again.
“Had to hit him while he was moving, unfortunately.”
I squinted at him. “You what?”
“So,” he said with a smile, “you’ll be wanting some food and a drink, right?”
“Uh, well, yeah. The thing is, though, I don’t have any cash.”
He waved that away. “You can earn it pouring pints.” He leaned on the bar toward me, one eye squinted shut and the other staring. “You can pour a proper pint, can’t you?”
I’d never done any such thing in my entire life.
“Yes, sir, I can.”
I was hungry, dammit.
“Brilliant!” He pointed to a gap in the bar beside the wall. “Get on back here so I can show you how we do it, and I’ll have someone fix you up a plate to eat before we get busy.”
I’d seen a few TV shows where someone poured a pint and got harassed by those who didn’t think it was good enough.
I knew I was setting myself up for trouble by accepting this task, especially if there was going to be a rush of people wanting that perfect pint fast. So when he showed me how to do it, I watched and listened closely, knowing my next meal was going to depend on doing it right.
“Ah, that’s a beauty,” Lars said with a smile as he looked at my very first pint. He handed it off to the big man sitting at the end of the bar, and a rush of relief went through me as Lars poked his head into the kitchen. “Can I get a large plate of fish and chips?”
I tried to take it in stride as Lars patted my back and grinned at me, like of course I could do it well because I’d said I could. Thank god I was a quick learner.
Lars sat himself on a stool and pointed to another one, so I gratefully sat down for the first time in what felt like days. I assumed it was the very dry air that was helping to dry my clothes out faster than normal.
“So,” he said, “what’s your plan then?”
“My plan?”
“What are you going to do?”
“Oh. Well, I guess I need to find someone who can work with fairy rings and send me home. But some guy out in that field said there’s a curse right now and fairy rings aren’t even supposed to be working.” I shrugged. “I guess I need someone familiar with the curse, then.”
“That would probably be the prince. And anyone with enough knowledge to do something would be at the castle.” Lars frowned hard at someone in the room. “Not that any of us know what they’re doing over there. Could be nothing.”
“I heard the prince needs to learn a lesson to break the curse.”
“Oh, is that what you heard?” He crossed his arms. “At least that much got through. He needs to learn a lot of lessons.”
I couldn’t quite tell if Lars meant the lessons learned from fists or books. Or beating the prince with books, maybe.
“Who’s teaching him?” I asked.
“Hmm?”
“The prince. Who’s teaching him?”
“At the moment? A pack of idiots.”
Before I could ask what he meant, a man came out of the kitchen area with a plate, some silverware, and a small glass of water. I thanked him and took it all, gulping some of the water before setting the glass on the windowsill beside me.
“So what does the prince need to learn?” I asked Lars before diving into my food.
Lars gave me a big smile. “Thank you for asking, son. You’re the first to do that.”
Again, I wasn’t quite sure what he meant by that.
Everything he was saying felt just a touch off.
It could be simply because I was from a whole other place and didn’t understand the culture here.
Or he could be a nutty old guy with nutty old guy problems. Either way, he was passionate about what he was saying.
“The prince is cocky and devious. Lies and manipulates to get what he wants. Thinks it’s cute.
He’s impulsive and reckless.” He leaned toward me and lowered his voice to say, “I can’t tell you how many times he’s been caught having sex right out in public where anyone could see because he’s living for today. ”
He said the last few words like he was quoting the prince. “Pretty sure that’s a felony where I come from.”
“Oughta lock him up,” he said with a nod, “but I know that wouldn’t work. Boy needs more than a passing glance at responsibility, that’s for sure. He might be adventurous and charming, but he needs to strap in and do his job.”
I nodded along, devouring absolutely delicious beer-battered fish. In between two of them, I said, “I’m not familiar with any princes in my world, but I would’ve thought there should be a level of civic duty to such a position. He sounds like a frat boy, not a government servant.”
Lars slapped his thigh and pointed at me. “Thank you! Exactly right.”
I smiled. He was a little crazy but I liked him.
“So are the people protesting?”
He harrumphed. “They did in the beginning. The rumors about the curse spread fast, and folks expected more from him. Obviously, no one thought it would all happen overnight—”
“Sure.”
“—but seeing something change would’ve helped.”
“But you got nothing?”
“Nothing. Of course, if one thing doesn’t work, you try something else, hmm?” He grinned and slapped me on the back. “So now you’re here.”
I grinned back at him and chewed equally amazing french fries, not at all sure why he thought any of this had something to do with me. He was kind of a sweet old man, but clearly not all present.
Somewhere outside a whistle sounded, and the atmosphere in the pub changed almost instantly.
Several people left money on the tables and walked out like they had somewhere to be all of a sudden.
Employees bustled about cleaning up and resetting chairs.
Was this preparation for the influx of drinkers Lars had implied we’d be getting?
“Here they come,” Lars told me. “You just keep pouring pints, and I’ll handle the rest.”
I stuffed another bite in my mouth before wiping off my fingers and standing. Maybe the whistle had been some kind of shift change indicator. Miners came to mind.
“That wasn’t a whistle for mining, was it?” I didn’t know much, but I knew that was brutal and often fatal work.
“Well, they are digging,” Lars said, “but for water. Gold and silver are only up in the mountains.”
Suddenly, men and women started marching into the pub and heading straight for the bar.
They were covered in so much dirt, it literally fell off of them with every step.
Digging for water. I didn’t know how someone did that, but the fact that they needed to said a lot about the suffering here in Trilgare.
Suffering that their prince wasn’t even trying to alleviate.
For a while, I concentrated on my task of pouring one pint after another.
Folks from the kitchen brought me clean glasses as they got them washed, and I just kept going.
Some of the drinkers put their glass back on the bar, and I filled it again.
I was praised more than once for the quality of my pours, so that was a huge relief.
At one point, I looked up and found Pinky from Solaris’s little crew standing there. He gave me a sheepish smile and said, “I am sorry about leaving you behind, but, well… We can’t exactly go against the prince’s orders, you know?”
The prince gave an order to leave me behind?
Wait a goddamned minute!
I pointed at Solaris. “That little shit is the prince?”