– Part I –
The White Realm
Chapter One –
Elowyn, Princess of Faeries
Third month of the Spring Equinox, Avalennon – Year of Serenity
Dear Journal,
Year of Serenity my foot! Whoever went and gave the years specific titles to describe their events must have been completely daft in the head, for this year has been anything but serene, even if it is only in my eyes. For, you see, this year, I – being the last child of the Lord Orandor and Lady Vahlada – have been cursed with a swarm of people who scurry all about me and wish to educate me in the ways of being a lady.
I want nothing to do with this!
They all tell me that being a lady means sitting still and going off on adventures only when there is a proper chaperone to escort you. Preferably, this chaperone should be the handsome prince that you will eventually marry and have children with. They tell me that being a lady means wearing those horrible contraptions that everyone's come to know as ' court clothing' and forsake archery, swordsmanship, and riding. They say that now, since I am of age to leave my parents' nest, I must change my ways – indefinitely. They want to pry me from the ancient history and legend tomes, from roaming through the wilds of the White Realm, so that I can be 'proper', at last.
I am the daughter of Orandor Raven-Helm and Vahlada, the Lady of the Dawn, and I will not give up my so-called unseemly ways. Long have I been given the freedom to sojourn as I please about my father's kingdom – long have I immersed myself in the mysteries and beauty of the woodlands. There have been princesses like me before, and they were allowed to remain their true, unseemly selves! Why must I change?
And now there is no more time to think on this, thrice curse it all, with a plague from the deepest dredges of the castle moat! For I hear the maid coming – Enabelle is her name – and she will most likely be making her way up here to once again try to cram me into another one of those silly, over-frumped gowns. Well, I will simply not have this, and so, dear journal of mine, I must get out before she gets in.
Until I next set pen to paper,
Elowyn, Princess of Avalennon
The faery handmaid who was the leader of the pair that had just come up the winding flight of steps that led up into the tower where the young Princess Elowyn laired gave a deep, long-suffering sigh and pushed open the door, preparing herself for the usual battle of wills. But all that greeted the two was the sight of the sleekly upholstered, empty room, completely devoid of any life. One of the seven gabled windows had been left wide open: a fresh breeze flowing in through it. Enabelle stopped dead and sighed. She had expected this.
Her companion, however, obviously hadn't. As soon as she saw that no one was in the room, with the window had been left open, and the Princess Elowyn nowhere to be found, she clapped her hands to either side of her face and made a high-pitched, frightened little shriek.
"Oh, Enabelle!" she cried. "She's gone!"
Enabelle nodded sympathetically to this, if not dryly.
"She's done it again."
The other maid crossed the room, going to the window, and looked out. The adventuresome young princess must have either climbed down with another one of her specially-made enchanted ropes, or flown out, in order to make her escape.
In any case, she was gone, and gone without a trace, but for that opened window. Enabelle knew that it wasn't the first time that the princess had done something like this – she was well aware of Elowyn's aversion to the trammels of society and the expectations that the faery court had for her. Enabelle, however, had been selected to serve as the princess's handmaid, and so even though she was aware of her charge's character and preferences, she had her duties to attend to.
But Elowyn, in the past few months since the group of handmaids had undertaken the task of transforming her into a true royal debutante, had proven herself to be quite skillful at making their job extremely difficult.
So, as the other maid – Sharidyn – carried on and on, moaning about how the Lord and Lady would be so perturbed at their daughter's disappearance, and then gabbling about what a little imp the Princess was, Enabelle simply sat down on the edge of the comfortable, rumpled four-posted canopy bed that sat next to the opened window. At length, she looked out at the late afternoon sky that hung over Avalennon like a canvas stained in gold, tangerine, and ruby.
Somewhere, out under that sky, was the Princess Elowyn.
And no matter what anybody else wanted, she wasn't going to be wearing any gown that her maids selected for her today.
* * *
Well, contrary to Enabelle's guess, Elowyn had not climbed out the window, although she had brought along a length of that enchanted rope – and neither had she sprouted wings and flown off. She had indeed escaped her tower-bedchamber by means of wings.
Although they weren't hers.
Years ago: around fifteen years ago, in fact, when Elowyn had been a precocious child of two, she had been given a birthday present of a beautiful, dun-coloured Pegasus stallion-colt. It had been a great formality, she remembered, although the pictures that passed through her head on recollecting it were a bit hazy.
What she did know, from memory and from what she had been told, was that there had been a visit from a delegation of Elves from the Lands Beyond, and that they had brought along the strange, beautiful creature as a gift to the youngest daughter of the Lord and Lady of the White Realm. Orpheus was his name, and he was a noble member of the winged Pegasus race, who dearly loved his young faery mistress and was fiercely loyal to her, and her alone.
Having a horse with wings had always been a plus.
Especially recently.
A scowl crossed Elowyn's pale, fair, young features, causing a slight line to form between her curving golden-brown brows as her sharp green eyes narrowed.
She had always been given her freedom by her parents: by her beloved, wise, and noble father who seemed to know and understand everything about her, and by her beautiful, warm-hearted mother who loved her headstrong young daughter no matter what she did. Elowyn had long been the much-lamented bane of the faery court, and there wasn't a single stuck-up courtier who hadn't felt the effects of one of the princess's well-timed pranks. Where most maidens of her age enjoyed embroidery and teatime and dancing and make-up and gowns, Elowyn loved nothing but horseback riding, archery, swordplay, and adventuring in the woods outside of Avalennon. History, legends, and the great literary works were her favorite reading material, and no one could get her to peruse a discourse on the hidden language of the fan for the life of them.
It wasn't that she was an untowardly rebellious child, or simply self-absorbed. Nothing could be further from the truth – Orandor and Vahlada had taught her better than that. Elowyn just simply found no pleasure in, and felt no love for, the lady-like ways. And the more that society pushed and nagged at her to give in to its demands, the more elusive and unrestrained in her adventuring she became.
Today was an especially great release for her. Scores of dancing-mistresses and embroidery tutors had once more been after her, from breakfast to the noontide meal, until she had become so exasperated that she had fled to the Tower of Lore – her father's personal retreat – and hidden there until it became quite apparent that her antagonists had given up the chase and disappeared to more enjoyable haunts. Only then had she escaped back to her room, the tower of the seven gabled windows in the west wing of the castle.
Now, driven from even that refuge, she urged Orpheus from a gentle, clipping trot into a livelier canter, and the two of them escaped further into the thick forest.
She had done this before, since she was nine. And somehow, Orandor always seemed to know exactly where she was, and what she was doing and whether she was all right or not after she disappeared from the palace – like the time that she had run off from a dull calligraphy lesson, leaving her dozing tutor behind, and wound up lying in a jade-green kryyate dragon's cave with a broken ankle and the wits scared out of her. Of course, her older brother, Gavin, had been the one to come and rescue her, along with their father, and he had given her a proper bad time of it on the way back. But that had been a long time ago. She was much more experienced in the art of escaping civilization now.
Straying but for a moment from her deep train of thought, Elowyn reined her mount in to a halt and gazed for a moment at her surroundings.
In every which direction that she looked, as far as her faery-eyes could see, was nothing but the thick, vast forest of magic-tainted trees: towering above her in a sky of evergreen-scented boughs. Only the sounds of the woodlands were about her, except for Orpheus' occasional snort or stamp of a hoof, and the jangle of his bridle and other trappings, and her own breath and heartbeat.
"Let's stop a moment, old friend," she said, and slipped down out of the saddle, her slippered feet touching to the ground softly. Gathering the reins into one hand, she moved round in front of the Pegasus and gave him a pat on the shoulder. Without a blink of his huge, sea green eyes, Orpheus followed her: patient and loyal.
Off of the invisible path that they had been following the two went, until Elowyn was contented with their position in the woods. Then, she sat down on the weathered, knotted root of a tree, which stuck up out of the ground until it was almost taller than her, and took off her left slipper, flexing her foot and wriggling her toes. It was incomparably lovely to be free of the tight-fitting contraptions, and to be surrounded by the ageless, green beauty of the forest.
She turned to Orpheus.
"I don't know why all the court ladies wouldn't rather be out here. Nice as the palace is, a lot of them just prefer to sit in the Chambers of State and chatter all day, where the sun can't touch them and the birds can't sing to them. And they'd reduce me to that. Me – can you think of it, Orpheus? Me!"
It passes belief, the look in the Pegasus's eyes seemed to say.
Elowyn shook her head and returned her attentions to removing the other slipper.
Today, she was dressed in a soft, bulky dark green tunic, with a long heather-gray skirt to go with it. Skirts she would accept as clothing, but only when she was in the castle. Gowns were totally prohibited when it came to the headstrong young princess's wardrobe, and skirts only received passing allowance. Now, if she were given her total preference, breeches, tunics, and boots would have been in the mod for her. No matter how much Vahlada now and then gently prodded her to dress as a lady. However, now that she was out on her own, she could dress as she pleased.
Off came the slippers, unbuttoned was the skirt, and she stood up again: folding the skirt into a neat bundle, now garbed properly in the breeches that she had hidden under it, with a pair of tall leather boots awaiting her. Out of the bejeweled net came her long, unruly head of pale blonde curls, showering down her back like a waterfall, to be plaited into a loose braid by her expert hands.
Once the transformation from unwilling court beauty to forest adventurer princess had been made, a snack of two large and highly glossed red apples was made by the two comrades. Orpheus, of course, munched with considerably more relish than Elowyn, who sat on her tree root and chewed thoughtfully, in silence. Then she dug out the common wayfaring staple: a thick although light sort of honey-flavored wafer that filled one and gave one energy but not an extra load in the stomach.
Noticing her actions, Orpheus stretched out his long, graceful neck towards his young mistress, horse-lips curling back from horse-teeth, shaking his head from side to side and nickering softly. Elowyn smiled a bit but held the wafers away from him.
"Not for you."
Orpheus let her know his displeasure by making a huffy grunt and rolling his eyes so that their whites showed, but Elowyn merely grinned.
"None of that now, you rogue. You don't want to become one of those shaggy, silly little ponies that they keep in the stables at court – the fat, roly-poly creatures who are only good for clip-clopping around and being ooh-ed and aah-ed at, do you?"
Orpheus vehemently denied this with even more violent shaking of the head.
"Then lay off of my food."
And once again, the two relapsed into silence, Elowyn continuing her momentarily interrupted train of thought as she chewed, a pensive look on her face.
Of course, her excursions into the forest weren't devoid of some restrictions. Orandor might have been a partially indulgent father, but he was not without common sense and fatherly authority. Whenever she was to be out of the castle – whether spontaneously or planned long ahead – she was to report within the next day to her parents, and let them know where she was, and that sort of thing. It didn't matter whether they had the powers to see her wherever she went and whatever she did; it was simply the rule. And her responsibility.
After that, it was really quite simple. She could roam anywhere about in the White Realm's lands, but she must be in the company of friends at least some of the time, and she must never cross very far over the magical boundaries that separated her world – the world of the faeries – from that of the mortals. When she did cross the boundaries, it was a very seldom occasion, and most of the time, only for special reasons of her own that Orandor had deemed permissible.
She really couldn't complain of her life being irritating or even close to horrible. She had two parents who loved her more deeply than she could imagine, and a host of sisters and brothers who all held her in equal affection. She was given her freedom, for the most part, and the life of a princess, a faery princess, was one that she could call her own forever more. Perhaps she had to deal with the annoyances of court life and society and being expected to change her ways in order to become a lady…but it really wasn't that bad. She was an experienced enchantress, even at the young age of seventeen years old, and she was immortal.
However, what exactly could one say about not being allowed to do certain things because of her birth-parents deaths – as she had been adopted by Orandor and Vahlada as an infant – and because of some unbelievably wonky prophesy that had been made about her, her, thousands of years before she had ever come into existence?
* * *
Author's Note: Hello to everyone – those of you who are new to my fantasy world, and those who have followed it from Ella, Arin, and Gavin's earliest capers in Wings of the Heart! I hope you find much enjoyment in this, my newest little epic, and will do everything I can to make certain that you experience these latest adventures as just as much of a thrill-ride as those that came before it. Any questions, comments, and/or concerns? Address them to miladylefantome@yahoo.com. Now, if you'll be oh so lovely and kind and review, I shall love you forever…and when I get a certain amount of reviews, the people who are responsible for them will be privy to a real live faery-tale secret, which I think you all will want to know… ^_^
First and last claimer/disclaimer: So, once and for all, before we begin, let it be known to everyone that all characters, names, places, and creatures featured within are straight from the imagination of Kates, and any attempt by anyone else to cause them to be otherwise will be looked on with the greatest contempt. (So, of your courtesy, don't try to kidnap or hurt my Evyrworldians. It would greatly sadden me, and they wouldn't like it too much.) Any mention of real-life fairy tales, such as Beauty and the Beast, Little Red Riding Hood, or others is purely at the whim of the authoress, although I do not own any of them. Fairy tales are free-domain, though, aren't they…
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