Chapter 18 The Royal Menagerie #2
“What a sweet, silly little thing,” said Orinthia.
Arris wholeheartedly disagreed. The reason the Aatosian ice hare followed after people and dusted their footprints with its long ears was to make sure they got lost in the snow. No one had ever seen the hare devour a human. But whenever they were sighted, a corpse was usually nearby.
“Yes … they’re very endearing,” he said.
Orinthia smiled and then looked over her shoulder. Not ten paces away was the menagerie walking path leading away from the snow banks.
“Thank you for spending some time with me, Your Majesty,” she said. “I am sure you are eager to get back to the attentions of Lady Edmea.”
“I’m quite content where I am,” said Arris.
Orinthia blinked. A shy smile stole across her face. “Truly?”
“Yes,” said Arris. “Which is saying something, because I’ve always considered this place a bit of a wasteland.”
Orinthia grinned. “It’s not a wasteland, Your Majesty. It’s a blank page.”
Arris remembered Orinthia’s talent of snow sculpting. She demonstrated it for him now, crouching to pile up the snow, whispering to it before she huffed a breath and a beautiful ice hare bounded across the fields.
“Exquisite,” said Arris.
“There is something else that you might find equally exquisite,” said Orinthia and then she kissed him.
It was a lovely kiss, although Arris was once more struck by the scent of sandalwood. Had his mother filled all the bathing chambers with a sandalwood soap? And if so … why?
After Orinthia, Arris stumbled upon Ursula in the wisp woods, a terrain near the mountains where the fog of the Isle seemed most alive.
She was in the pavilion farthest from the entrance, the point at which the menagerie walkway looped back upon itself.
People often assumed there was nothing here, for fog typically curled around the archway, obscuring the trees and animals from view.
On this morning, however, the mist was thin and Arris was able to see not only the tall, translucent wisp willows but also Ursula hurling stones at the berries and cursing loudly.
Wisp willows were odd trees. Their boughs floated upward, weaving into pale corridors where clouds drifted over the ground and the sky was impossible to behold.
Strung along each limb were white, succulent berries.
It was a favorite food of the cloud bears, who often hunted and floated in and around the wisp woods.
Arris stepped through the archway. “What are you doing?”
“Struggling, evidently,” said Ursula, not sparing him more than a glance.
It was a shockingly informal response. Arris found it refreshing.
“If you don’t mind my saying so, I’d be careful not to hit—”
One of Ursula’s stones missed the leafy canopy of white berries and instead hit the trunk of one of the wisp willows. Upon contact, the willow burst apart, leaving only the ghostly impression of a tree where it had once stood.
“—the wisp willows,” said Arris.
“Ugh,” said Ursula, plopping onto the ground.
“Cloud berries are quite coquettish, as far as fruits go,” said Arris, hoping that might comfort her. “I don’t think they can be knocked to the ground, I’m afraid. They can only be harvested by touch. Everything else bounces off or goes through them.”
Ursula glanced at him, bemused.
“Did I already curtsy to you?”
“No.”
“Did I speak with the appropriate amount of deference and all that?”
“Uh, well—”
“My mother would throttle me,” said Ursula, shaking her head. “Can we pretend I did all those things?”
Arris laughed. “Yes. Let’s.”
Ursula pointed at the canopy of white berries. The wisp willow she had hit a moment ago was slowly beginning to reform and gain solidity.
“Cloud berries are annoyingly hard to find in the markets of the Ulva Wylds,” said Ursula.
“You have to rely on travelers and merchants, and oftentimes the berries are bruised beyond recognition or are simply glass berries painted with mallowmill to make them look like cloud berries.” Ursula made a sound of deep annoyance. “Have you ever tried them?”
“Only once, I’m afraid,” said Arris. “But I’ve never forgotten the taste of them—”
“Or how a single bite lets you rise up a few inches in the air,” said Ursula excitedly.
“My mother had a few jars of cloud berry jam. They’re all finished now, but she always let me take huge spoonfuls of them.
When I asked for seconds and thirds, she never said no …
I didn’t even know how precious they were until I tried to find them again. ”
Arris eyed her. “Sounds like you have a generous mother.”
Ursula made a face. “Yes. It sounds like that.”
Arris waited for her to say more, but she didn’t. Arris remembered her reticence about her parents during the talent trial, and it made him curious. The longer he looked at Ursula, the more he felt as if he’d seen her somewhere …
“Here’s our chance!” said Ursula, pointing.
Arris followed her gaze and saw two cloud bears floating into the tunnel of wisp willows. They were diminutive creatures, no taller than a child, and their fur was gray and smoke-soft. They moved gracefully, oblivious to Arris and Ursula on the ground far below them.
Ursula clapped her hands happily. “Excellent. We’ll just wait for the bears to take them and then we’ll have some for ourselves.”
“I really wouldn’t do that,” said Arris. “They’re mostly tame but when it comes to their food, they’ll fight you. They have extremely sharp teeth, you know. It’s why the palace cooks only save cloud berries as a treat.”
“So they’re scared of nothing?” she asked.
“Well, I imagine they’d be scared of other bears out in the true wilds, but they’re the only ones of their kind in this pavilion,” said Arris.
“Excellent,” said Ursula, standing. She started waving her hands up and down, trying to catch the cloud bears’ attention.
One of them, with a tangle of cloud berries already in its paw, looked down at Ursula.
A low snarl filled the air. Alarm raced through Arris’s veins.
A mauling would be a poor precedent for marriage, and while Ursula struck an imposing figure—
Arris blinked. One moment she was standing in front of him, golden-haired and sharp-toothed.
The next, she had transformed into a huge blonde bear loping under the arcade.
She bellowed and the cloud bears scampered away with frightened yelps.
Ursula nosed at something on the ground, and when she turned around, she was not only a girl once more, but also carrying an armful of cloud berries. She grinned at Arris.
“Want some?”
For the next half hour, Arris and Ursula gorged themselves on cloud berries.
He kept thinking—rather arrogantly—that everything was a pretense for a kiss.
But Ursula made no move and neither did Arris.
For a moment, they were both lost in the small treasure of the cloud berries, laughing as their feet lifted off the ground with each bite.
The berries tasted of pure delight, like the daydream of eating a cloud come true in the way only a child could imagine.
Fleeting and innocent and achingly sweet.
“Thoughts?” asked Ursula, patting her belly.
“I was thinking of how refreshing it is not to smell sandalwood for a moment,” said Arris, rubbing his mouth. All that kissing had made them chapped.
Ursula blinked. “I meant in the sense of how you would use cloud berries in a sweet or savory dish.”
“Oh.”
Ursula laughed. She was extraordinarily pretty, with her long, golden hair and generous build. Ursula didn’t seem to want anything from him, which made her a safe choice … but a sad one too. Maybe he was a fool to wish for the thrill of danger if it meant he might know the ecstatic heights of love.
Ursula smacked her lips happily. “I think it all depends on what you want. It’s not as though either of us have to make a decision about it today, but still … fun to ponder.”
Arris knew she was talking about a recipe, but the words calmed him.
“We don’t have to make a decision today,” he echoed.
After he left Ursula and the wisp woods, Arris was so deep in thought he almost didn’t hear Heka shouting to him from the pavilion of tropical lagoons.
“Your Highness!”
Through a wooden archway, Arris saw Heka moving through the pale lagoon that was home to the pearl crocodile.
All of Heka’s clothes were quite sheer, which put Arris in the awkward position of looking as respectfully as one could while also acknowledging that the fabric, when wet, appeared as if it had been painted onto her curves. He felt a bit like prey in a trap.
Arris walked through the archway. Here, it was warm and humid. He took off his shoes and walked to the sandy riverbank.
“Come swim with me, Your Highness,” Heka shouted.
“I … I am not appropriately dressed, unfortunately!” he called out.
Heka winked. “Who said you needed to be dressed?”
Well. She had a point. Arris grinned as he began unbuttoning his jacket—
“I implore you to cease before I see something that will make me curse my own sight,” said a cold, familiar voice.
Yvlle stood behind him holding a note.
“Your presence has been urgently requested in the pavilion of the tranquility pond,” she said.
Arris frowned and took the note, which appeared hastily written:
THERE IS SOMETHING YOU NEED TO KNOW.
—DEMELZA