7
____________________
There were many places in the world that just looked better at night.
Choilltean was one of them.
The village we were in came to life as stars took to the sky, the streets buzzing with life and echoing chatter and laughter in every direction.
Fireflies ran the pathways, scattered across every square inch of the place and leaving very little to be concealed in darkness.
Occasionally they left little trails of light behind them, a dusting of particles that hovered in the air and would tickle my skin as we passed.
Killian led me through streets wordlessly, until we finally stopped outside of a building that looked far too similar to every other wooden-contraption, except for the small tables and chairs made of bark outside of it.
“What is this place?”
He regarded me for a moment as he pulled a chair out, motioning for me to take a seat. “You humans have something similar, I think you call it a cafe?”
A cafe. A pixie cafe. I wanted to shriek.
Clamping my mouth shut, I thanked him with a smile and slid myself into the seat, watching him eagerly as he moved around the small, round table and took his own chair.
Once he was seated, he crossed one leg over the other, hooked an arm around the back of the chair, and sunk his weight against it. Whatever troubles this strange pixie had seemed to melt away from him, combining with the mystical pathways of the fireflies.
Another pixie arrived moments later, glaring at me until she noticed who I was sitting across from. Only then did she soften her face, ignoring me entirely as she pushed some tangled black hair behind her ear and smiled at Killian.
“The usual, Killian?”
“Two, please.” He dipped his chin at her, either ignoring her flushed cheeks and batting eyelashes or completely oblivious to them. At least I wasn’t the only one that felt overly flush in the presence of him. She nodded, accepting her defeat before shuttling herself back into the hut behind us.
I wasn’t sure how to start a conversation with him, so I let the silence stretch until the cafe-pixie returned moments later and set down two steaming bowls of stew. Vegetables bobbed on the surface, but the thick chunks of dark meat within were what made my stomach growl audibly.
Killian pretended not to hear that and slid one bowl towards me, leaving the second for himself before waving the server off.
“Did you come prepared with questions?”
I managed to snap out of my state of bewilderment, leaning back in my chair. “Only about a thousand.”
He motioned for me to continue just as he started to dig into his meal.
“What is a… Saoghal?”
His eyes snapped up to me. “Where did you hear that?”
Folding my lower lip between my teeth, I tried to scrape up an excuse. “Someone was talking about it in the hallway while I waited for you.”
Awful excuse.
“Oh.” He frowned, then shrugged as he looked back at his food. “It’s the name of our plane of existence. Our world, if you will.”
“But you live in my world.”
“Do we?” He grinned, a drizzle of grease starting to escape the corner of his lips. “It’s just what we call the world we exist within.”
“Okay.” I shuffled in my chair. “What about a… ceadan?”
“Were you eavesdropping on the guards, Olivia?”
Wincing, I nodded. Thankfully, he only laughed at me.
“Ceadan is the name of the guard that exists to protect members of the monarchy. Though sometimes I believe it to be a mockery — Raegan could fight off a hundred of us and not break a sweat.”
“That!” I pointed at him. “How do you know so many… human words? You use our terms as if you have used them a thousand times before.”
To that, Killian shrugged. “Some of us come and go from your world as needed. There are a handful of us in the ceadan whose sole purpose is to learn and understand humans.”
“Like you?”
He laughed again, this time at me. “No. Niamh.”
All at once, my questions slithered out of my mind and disappeared in the midnight breeze.
Instead, I just said what came to mind. What had been nagging at my mind, burrowing deep into my thoughts until I could focus on nothing else. No one else. “Will you tell me about Raegan?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. My Prince is off limits for discussion.” All witty charm faded from Killian’s face as he looked at me.
“But… I can’t explain it. I just don’t understand him.”
“Good,” Killian sighed, setting down his food. “Only fools think that they understand the Prince.”
“I know you said I’m not to trust anyone, but… I trust you.”
Softness returned to those darkened-jade eyes of his as he looked at me.
“You and the Prince seem to be friends. Can I trust him?”
“No.” Killian let out another sigh as he swallowed the last of his food. “Raegan is exactly the type of pixie you need to steer clear of. I love him, like a brother, but deceit is in his nature just as it is in all of ours.”
I couldn’t help but to frown. “How do you all get along, then?”
Killian chuckled again, the noise lightening the air around us as another breeze from the moon skipped over my skin. “We don’t.”
“Perhaps your definition of peace is different to mine, then. Back home, fights break out in the street every night.”
“King Ronan worked tirelessly throughout his reign to ensure Choilltean found its own balance amongst the world. Our people are held to a certain standard to keep it that way. The others? Not so much.”
“I don’t understand.”
He gave me a knowing smile. “Before King Ronan, the kingdoms of Saoghal were in disarray. We don’t like one another during the best of times, but those were dark days, belonging to war and chaos that feasted upon us all.”
“There are others?” I paused only to place some food in my mouth. “Other kingdoms?”
“Yes.”
A place so small was becoming bigger by the second.
“Will you take me to see them?”
Mischief danced in Killian's eyes. “Choilltean isn’t enough for you?”
“It is.” I nodded. “But I want to see it all.”
“Why?”
“The answer to that will only make you laugh at me.”
Killian pursed his lips, no promise of acting otherwise in sight.
“I… I feel like I can breathe properly for the first time in… years. I just… I feel like I need to see it all.”
He regarded me for a moment, the noise around us fading into a quiet buzz. “I never understood the ways of humans. Such short lives spent in frenzy and peril. So no, it does not sound crazy that you wish to be freed of it, if only for a short while.”
My chest tightened at that, at the reminder of the hourglass that had been placed on this strange situation of mine. Half of my mind was still convinced it was a dream, the other half was possessed by my bleeding heart that wished it was not.
It is just a dream, though.
Whether it was, or it wasn’t, I decided at that moment, at that table, that I would not waste a moment of it.
That I would engrain every second of my time in Saoghal into my brain, because the power of it was stronger than any medicine that had ever entered my body, the memories already far more powerful than every word spoken to me by a professional.
I was going to tell Killian that, too. But I didn’t get the chance.
~
When I was twelve years old, my parents took me to the doctor.
It had become increasingly apparent that there was something different about me, but no one wanted to put a name to how I acted, how I floated through life.
My teachers had told my parents, time and time again, that I was unusual.
They made note of the way that I sat alone at lunch-time, or how I stowed myself away in the art-room during the breaks throughout the classes.
One of them actually sent me to detention, more times than I can remember, due to falling asleep in the middle of class.
But the school finally hit their tether with me when I started a fist-fight in the courtyard after the exhaustion had become so powerful that I resorted to the only thing I had left — anger.
So we went to the doctor. He finally gave them a name to put to how I acted, how I felt, and that was that.
But it didn’t cure it, of course it didn’t.
As time went on and I lived with this thing inside of me, I started to accept that it was just who I was, who I’d always be.
Because every time I started to find an ounce of joy in my life, some divine interruption would rip it away from me.
That was exactly what happened sitting on the patio of that small cafe in Choilltean. The moment I felt myself unfurling, a heaviness lifting from my chest, the world felt the need to correct it.
It was hard to say where, exactly, they came from. One moment, Choilltean was quiet save for the natural song of lives being lived. And the next, chaos reigned over the world.
Bodies dropped down from the sky. A couple at first, then a dozen, then easily hundreds.
They soared down towards the ground, weapons in their hands that glinted against the light of the fireflies.
Hair pulled back, hair shaved, hair braided.
Eyes bright, eyes dark, eyes clouded. All of them hit the earth with a thud, and then they got to work.
Pixies screamed as the intruders burst into homes, dragging bodies to the streets and carving them up like meat on a stick.
The few that decided to flee before they were attacked were targeted with bows and arrows, small sticks with sharp stones on the ends that pierced the backs of those who tried to run.
A village of green and brown was soon red.
Killian jumped up to his feet, pulling a sword up and over his back as he motioned for me to rise.
“Stay by me,” he grumbled as he palmed that sword a few times in his hand. I didn’t need to be told twice, I hugged his shadow like it was my shield and followed every step that he took.
The intruders that we encountered were skilled, but they were nothing in comparison to him.
He twisted and sliced, twirled and plunged, ducked and punched.
While their eyes reflected nothing but rabid wrath, Killian’s shone with power and intention.
Every move he made was practiced and perfected, every drop of blood that he poured was planned and exact.
We sprinted down pathways, Killian rising to every challenge and carving at every intruder that he came across.
They didn’t look so different from the pixies of Choilltean — all with wild, unkempt hair.
All with vibrant, natural eyes. But the one thing that I did notice, that plagued my mind and wouldn’t relent, was the fact that not a single one of them had ears.
Where their ears should have been were small holes, the flesh long since removed.
Killian made a turn down a road that I was too distracted to notice, leaving me gasping as I flicked my attention from pathway to pathway, trying to catch the sight of his matted, dark hair.
But there were bodies everywhere, women and children screaming and running, men wielding whatever they could to defend their families whether it was sticks or stones, weapons or fists.
“Come! Come now!”
I thought that call had been made for me.
I felt it tunnel into my being as if it was just me and him, as if a saviour had been placed somewhere to protect me.
I spun around on my heel, trying to locate that voice, that bellow.
But when I did finally see who it belonged to, I couldn’t help but to stare.
The world slipped away from me as I watched the Prince of Choilltean, high upon a hill, with two blades in his hands as he beckoned villagers towards him.
He placed each body behind his own, a super-shield of pixie flesh that he dared the intruders to progress towards.
I understood what Killian had meant, then, because Raegan existed with his weapons.
They were extensions of himself, extra limbs that belonged to him and no one else as they arced across the starless sky.
Mounds of bodies, dead not alive, gathered at his feet as he stormed his way across his kingdom, carnage in his wake and rage in his eyes.
There was no explaining why, but I stumbled towards him. My legs were moving before my mind had time to catch up, and all I knew was that I had to get to Raegan.
Another body collided with mine, nearly sending me to the ground if it wasn’t for two different arms that wrapped around me and yanked me upright. Killian finished a low blow to my attackers knees, catching me in the opposite hand and tugging me against his body.
“I told you to stay close,” he huffed as he dragged us away from the heat of the fight, screams of terror ringing in my ears.
“I… I got lost.”
His face, splattered in blood that mixed with long beads of sweat, tried to soften. “Come on, let’s get you back to the castle.”
I didn’t argue. I let Killian tighten his grip around my waist, nearly dragging me the whole way back as I let the horror of the attack flash over my eyes, over and over again, until we were back at the castle.