Thanks, all you lovely reviewers! swim6516, I could use a Gordo, myself! As it is, I have to follow my younger, engaged sister around and pester her with questions to make sure most of this story isn't completely off-base. Alas! For a best friend of my own to throw myself at! Perhaps someday.... ;) JustAGirl4, I'm not sure which book that might be, but if you like fairy tales, Robin McKinley does some fantastic novel-length retellings. (My favorite's Deerskin.) Patricia C. Wrede's Snow White and Rose Red is also marvelous. I'm sorry, mel, no discussion of the Fight yet, but I don't think you'll be disappointed! :D Elementals, you do have a heart of gold...such words...you honor me. Thank you! Elly and Alison, I'm not sure if you've made it this far yet, but I'm so glad you enjoyed the first couple chapters...I hope you're still enjoying this little story! VaSinFlor, exactly! That's precisely what I wanted to come across about their relationship! I'm sorry the last chapter was dull, MysteriouslyUnique, but maybe this chapter's better? pixievix, of course you're cool and loved! How could you doubt it?! ;D MissEmmy, no one quite understands the plight of the older sister like an older sister...perhaps we ought to start a club?
Anyway, horrendously long notes there. Sorry! On to the chapter....
Chapter 12: Sun-Girl and Dragon-Prince
Gordo woke her at first light—far, far too early in Lizzie's opinion. Foggy-headed, blinking sleep from her eyes, she stumbled about in the grey, shadowy dawn, readying herself for the second half of the Black Snake's prescribed journey. They were to travel over the foothills today, skim along the crumpled edges of the mountain range to the south until at last they reached a long, sea-shredded crescent of green peninsula. The middle of the peninsula—they should reach it late afternoon—was their final destination.
"Ready?" Gordo asked, swallowing the last of his breakfast. Lizzie looked at the remains of bread and cheese in her palm and nodded. Last night's simple stew seemed to have ruined her tolerance for the monotony of their travel fare. What she wouldn't do for some fruit or even a little butter. Another few days of bread and cheese and she would start eating grass, just for a little variety.
Uch. Her stomach gave a queasy roll against her ribcage. Not that she wanted anything at the moment. On the contrary. She seriously doubted even chocolate would tempt her right now. Swallowing dryly, she settled herself behind Gordo on the carpet, clasped her hands around his waist, and shut her eyes.
"And we're off," Gordo announced, the carpet rising an instant later. Ooh, closing her eyes as the ground dropped away beneath them was so not a good idea. Gulping a steadying breath, she opened her eyes and waited for the carpet to level off. At last it surfaced into the warm sunrise, liquid honey light spilling all around them, seeping into Lizzie's eyes, running soothing, spreading fingers along her back, melting....
The last thing Lizzie saw before drifting wearily into the sunlight was the dim, tiny flickers of Loyde and Aurelia's fire, two slumped splotches presumably still asleep beside it. Good-bye, she thought down to them, Good luck....
The rest of the day was a hazy smear of sunlit strangeness. Never quite asleep, she tripped and tangled in a sick dream landscape, pursued by her fitful stomach and the cold, keening wind along the mountains. Several times she surfaced to panicked paralysis, terrified for a few eternal moments that she would never breathe again. Several times she tried to stay awake, but the sun in her eyes, Gordo's steady warmth, the sleepless night before would conspire to lull her back to dreaming.
When the carpet started down to earth again, Lizzie was never so grateful in her life. Digging ragged nails into her palms to stay awake, she lifted her head from Gordo's back to look below them.
Green. Green, green, and more green. A waving sea of grassy plain swelling in low hills from the mountains to their left to lap in tiny furrows at the far distant ocean on their right. And there, atop one verdant crest, a figure like a raft adrift, solitary, still in the wind-rippling green.
"That's our stop, I'd guess," Gordo called over one shoulder. Lizzie merely nodded, sleep weighing again on her eyelids. She burrowed her fingers deep in her palms. Stay awake!
And awake she stayed as they flew down, touching the ground a short distance away from the lone figure. It took Lizzie a moment to withdraw her arms from around Gordo, and a moment longer for him to stand and help her up. By the time she'd risen to shaky legs, their guide had reached them.
"On behalf of she who sent me, I greet you," came the melodious welcome. Great, Lizzie found herself thinking, another freaking princess. And then, almost before the thought completed, she realized two things. One, the woman standing before them had gold hair—long, glorious curls of real, glimmering gold, fine as thread, precious as the rope of emeralds wound through them. And two, apart from said gold hair, she looked exactly like Kate Sanders.
Lizzie's swift gasp rang in stereo with Gordo's.
If the Kate-clone heard it, she gave no sign, sage-green eyes regarding them coolly from beneath a perfectly smooth brow. "You will come with me," she asserted, as though the words were merely a formality, as though she expected they already knew exactly what they were supposed to be doing.
Realizing her mouth hung open, Lizzie snapped it closed and turned a questioning glance to Gordo. Was she dreaming again?
But Gordo looked no less confused than she felt. After blinking at her a long moment, he gave a minute shrug of one shoulder, the curve of his mouth seeming to say, Toldja it was getting weirder here. Leaving Lizzie fighting a scowl—she would not scowl in front of Miss Perfect-Kate-Princess lady—he turned and knelt to begin rolling the carpet.
"You will not require that," Kate-clone said, soft voice piercing the noisy, wuffling wind as though it had never been. "You will come with me," she repeated, in an exact echo of her previous tone.
Well, hell, Lizzie thought, you may think we know the script, Miss Perfect-Kate-Princess lady, but gimme a break! And she would not scowl. She would not.
Tilting her chin to mimic the angle of the gold-haired woman's, she reached a confident hand behind her, waiting only for Gordo's grasp around her fingers before stepping toward Kate-clone.
Immediately, with a swish of heavy emerald brocade skirts, the other woman turned and began walking, back perfectly straight, head forward as though she were once more alone in this immense green expanse. Lizzie marched along behind, trying to ignore her still-present nausea, hardly even aware of Gordo at her side until he squeezed her hand. Startled, she swung a glance to find his eyes bright, mouth crooked at the corners, shoulders shaking in silent laughter.
"What?" she hissed, the whisper nearly lost beneath the wind.
"You're scowling," Gordo muttered through a knowing grin.
For a moment, Lizzie was so surprised she couldn't find her voice. Finally, scowl giving way to a fierce frown, she managed to work her mouth around a vehement, "Dammit!"
Something like a low snort emerged from behind Gordo's clamped lips. Dammit, indeed. And, why, in heaven's name, couldn't she stay angry with him looking like that? Frown fading before reluctant amusement, Lizzie scrounged up a pout from somewhere and turned it on him full force. Serves him right, she thought.
But Gordo only smiled apologetically, dipped his head in a courtly bow, and raised the hand he held to brush a kiss over her knuckles. "Poor Lizzie," he murmured, heaving a dramatic sigh against the hand he held to his breastbone. Whereupon the grin resurfaced and Lizzie found herself fighting laughter.
Dammit, indeed.
"You're incorrigible," she muttered, and would have said more if only Kate-clone hadn't chosen that moment to stop.
Another swish of skirts and she faced them again. "We shall spend the night here and tomorrow begin our journey." Lizzie bridled at the imperious pitch of the words...but at least that other weird tone was gone.
Trying for a prim, unaffected nod, Lizzie tossed a careless, "Sounds good to me," and settled cross-legged on the long grass. Peachy, she thought, watching first Gordo, then Kate-clone sit as well. At least until I have to go to the bathroom. Which, judging by the renewed churning of her stomach, might be sooner than she'd expected.
And as though that weren't enough, in this freaking open, grassy paradise there wasn't exactly a place to go to the bathroom.
Dammit. Indeed.
But she didn't want to think about that. Swallowing resolutely, she turned her attention to her companions. Gordo was slumped on one side, his legs behind her, one elbow propped beneath him as he watched Princess Kate-clone stare at the distant horizon. His brow was bent in that trademark Gordo-thinking way and Lizzie wondered what he was puzzling over.
A minute later it cleared and he said, "You're Arevhat, aren't you?" Ah. So he'd figured out which fairy tale they'd stepped into.
Kate-clone blinked, eyes refocusing on Gordo. "Of course," she answered—that tone back again.
"Still married to the Dragon-Prince?"
Something unexpectedly like pain flickered in...Arevhat's...eyes. "Yes," she said, voice almost another thread of wind. Silence filled the space around them. Then, looking away, Arevhat swallowed and asked, still not much louder than the wind, "Did you not know that already?"
Gordo's posture didn't change, but somehow he seemed to lean closer to the gold-haired princess. "No," he replied, very quietly. "We are strangers here. We have only heard a very little of your story."
Heh. He had anyway. Lizzie was still pretty solidly in the dark.
"I see." Arevhat swallowed again. Still not looking at them, she said, "I had thought the mother of the Sun had told you my story already."
If possible, Gordo's voice went even quieter. "No. She hasn't."
"I see," Arevhat said again, and Lizzie wanted to shout, See? See what? Why must you both be so bloody cryptic?
But instead she found herself lurching to her feet, mouth opening to ask where she might find a bathroom, please, before she realized her stomach was simply not going to wait for the question, let alone an answer. Staggering up the low rise beside the night's camp, she'd just reached the other side when her stomach rebelled.
There was nothing available to rebel, of course, as she hadn't eaten all day, but her stomach insisted on going through the motions anyway. Coughing a long few minutes later, after the heaving stopped, she became aware of the tears sliding along her cheeks, her arms trembling as they held her up, the acrid taste in her mouth...and Gordo, kneeling beside her, holding her hair back—so damn much hair, blast it all—of all things.
"Y'okay, Liz?" he asked softly, one hand smoothing a loop of hair from her face, his thumb sweeping the wetness off her cheek. His eyes were intensely blue.
Lizzie tried to look away, a scalding blush rising from what felt like her toes. Damn. They'd known one another their whole lives, but never once had she been violently sick in front of him. In fact, she'd never been really sick in front of him at all. Sniffles, colds, one itchy case of Chicken Pox, but nothing so...humiliating.
But he wouldn't let her go, those eyes holding hers with such concern. I want my mom, she thought distinctly. But she wasn't here. And Gordo was.
"No," she said at last, tears clutching her throat so the word almost didn't escape. Immediately, his hands released her hair and her face, dropping to her shoulders to pull her close. Lizzie sank gratefully against him, shaking as more tears slipped down her face.
"You haven't felt well all day, have you?" he asked, rocking her gently. "I know you were trying to sleep on the carpet, but you kept waking up. Didn't seem like you were having very good dreams."
He'd noticed? He certainly hadn't said anything. Apparently, the look she gave him asked the same question, as he laughed and said, "Well, it was kind of hard to miss, since you kept squeezing and clutching at me. That and the occasional whimper kind of gave it away."
Lizzie mustered a smile, sniffling as he tucked a damp strand of hair behind her ear. "You feeling a little better now?" he asked.
With a shuddering breath, she said, "A little. My mouth tastes terrible."
A sympathetic chuckle. "I bet." He reached up, his hand coming down with their waterskin. Lizzie cocked her head to see Arevhat standing a little behind Gordo, cool gaze surprisingly concerned around the edges. But then Gordo was offering Lizzie water, and when she looked up again, the princess was gone.
They sat there for a little longer—exactly how long, Lizzie couldn't tell—until finally she had stopped shuddering and shaking and her stomach had calmed down a bit more. With one final squeeze of her shoulders, and a wisping kiss across her hairline, Gordo asked, "Ready to go back now?" Lizzie gave a mute nod and struggled to her feet, walking slowly back to the campsite with one of Gordo's arms still loosely curved around her back.
Arevhat looked almost as though she hadn't moved, skirts perfectly arranged about her knees, curls a picturesque tangle over one shoulder. But there was a sliver of something like a kind smile on her face as Lizzie met her gaze. Startled, Lizzie returned it on reflex, too distracted to notice as Gordo pulled her down beside him. Smile fading, she found herself comfortably curled on the soft grass, head pillowed on Gordo's extended legs.
"Okay?" he asked, fingers brushing lightly through the hair above her ear.
"Mmm," she hummed. "Thanks."
"Sure." His voice was very soft.
For several minutes, there was no sound but the wind slithering through the grass, blowing hollowly along the mild hills. With Gordo's warmth under one cheek and the late afternoon sun draping a gilt blanket over her, it was beyond easy to drift into a thin, hazy doze. When at last Gordo spoke, his voice came from very far away.
"This place is very...open," he said quietly.
"Yes," came Arevhat's reply. "It used to be a desert, you see." A pause, then, "Perhaps long, long ago, it was something else, but I knew it first as a desert. It is beautiful now. So green. But in some ways, I believe it was almost more beautiful then."
"There's nothing quite like a desert," Gordo agreed.
A low, musical laugh. "It was a terrible desert," she corrected dryly. "Nothing but sand and sand and death. The sun glared hatred here." A sigh. "But my love and I shared it by night, under starlight and moonglow, an eternity of ripples and frozen tides of molten silver. He was forbidden the day, and for a time I wandered those hours alone. But I was here too long to be ever lonely, and soon I too slept the day away, waking to the night. It was beautiful then."
Her love? The Dragon-Prince Gordo mentioned earlier?
"But it's not a desert now," Gordo said, and Lizzie was too far away to make him ask about the Dragon-Prince.
"No. It hasn't been for some time now."
"How did that happen?"
A long silence. "You say you know some of my story." An edge of steel lined those words. "Why do you not tell me?"
"All right," Gordo agreed almost instantly. "If you promise to tell me the rest I don't know."
"So be it." Arevhat's words held indulgent amusement.
A breath-filled pause; Lizzie could nearly see Gordo gathering his thoughts. "I know of a young girl blessed with gold hair by an old woman she was kind to. I know of that young girl charming a monster of a Dragon-Prince back into his human form. I know the Dragon-Prince was so grateful, he married that young girl, but on the day after their wedding, her spiteful stepmother threw her in a river. Instead of drowning, the young girl washed into a desert wasteland where she met a hunter cursed years before, forbidden from seeing the sun."
Another breath. "I know that at the end of three years, that young girl had a child with the hunter, and out of consideration for her child's father, went on a journey to break the curse. I know she found the mother of the Sun, who gave her a cure, that when she cured the hunter, his laughter turned this place into the green plains we see, but that the cure also brought her husband back to her. I know she gave her son to his father and returned herself to her husband. But that is all I know."
Silence. Then, a shuddering breath before Arevhat spoke, voice brittle and bright, "You tell my tale very ill...for which I thank you. Many times I have heard it sung in verse, which is no pleasure to my husband and nothing but cruelest pain to myself." A bitter laugh. "I do not need rhyme to remind myself of my love's rich laughter or the brilliance of my son's eyes. I do not need song to capture those days of terror on the river. And no harmony, no matter how beautiful, can match the bliss of my love's embrace. No. Despite my every desire, I can neither forget nor regain those years."
Again that bitter laugh, words following quick and fierce. "And you, traveler, you wish to know the rest of my story? Very little to tell. My desert is gone. My love is gone. My son is gone. And I have seen not one of them since. Do you require more?"
"No," Gordo croaked, the word immediately followed by a swish of skirts, a rustle of grasses parting. Lizzie lay, still, eyes hot, definitely more awake than asleep now, listening to the ragged rasp of Gordo's breathing. At the barest touch of his hand to her hair, she shifted and risked a hushed question.
"Has she gone?"
It took a moment for him to answer. "Yes."
Shifting a little more, Lizzie opened her eyes. Through the glare of the sun, she could see his eyes were a dull, watery grey. "Good," she said vehemently, rising slowly. "What the hell was Green-Queen thinking talking to you like that?"
Gordo gave a gurgling chuckle, shrugged, but his eyes didn't change. "Damn, Lizzie, I didn't think she'd react like—I mean, I knew her story wasn't happy, but...."
Lizzie reached for his floundering hand. "You had no way of knowing," she said, giving his hand a firm squeeze. "Besides, she looks like Kate, which means no matter what you do, she's bound to be beyond nasty. It's not your fault."
Gordo looked down, drew a deep breath. When his eyes found hers again, the blue had made its way back. "How're you feeling?" he asked.
Lizzie rolled her eyes. "Furious. But aside from that, exhausted." Smiling a little, "Would you mind terribly being my pillow for a little while?"
"Got nothing else to do," he shrugged.
"Oh, thanks!" And planting both hands on his chest, she shoved him to his back and settled herself comfortably against his side, her head on his shoulder. Burrowing her fingers into a fold in his tunic, she gave a loud, content sigh.
"Comfy?" Gordo laughed.
"Mmm," she affirmed, "you're a little bony, but other than that you make a very nice pillow."
"Thanks," he drawled, but Lizzie didn't bother to reply. For the first time all day, peaceful sleep seemed a possibility. She gave herself up to it, tumbling dizzy into blessed darkness.
****
end of chapter 12
chapter notes:
The version of "Sun-Girl and
Dragon-Prince" I used here can be found in The Serpent Slayer: and Other
Stories of Strong Women, retold by Katrin Tchana, illustrated by Trina
Schart Hyman.