Chapter Six

Iris

After the treaty with the Vittra, we had almost-friendly exchange and visits almost every month in each other's compounds. The royals – including the rulers, markises and marksinnas – were already in peaceful and friendly terms with the Vittra (especially me and Sara), but the ordinary Trylle and trackers still were developing in their relationship with the fellow Vittra commoners and trackers.

Information about each other was often let out, though not very secretive ones. It was like as if the Vittra and the trylle were finally getting to turn into more than pure enemies. Our relationship bettered when Sara lent us some help to give humans delusions about Iris's strange and inhuman case.

Iris was also gaining increasing fame around everywhere. Before her debutante ball, she had come over to the palace many times (in fact almost stayed there the entire time) and had interacted a lot with almost everyone, and unsurprisingly everyone had also been pretty interested in her strangely interesting stories among the humans. Rhys and Rhiannon also accepted Iris as one of their limited friends, though Iris started having some awkward moments in between Rhys and Rhiannon's romance.

Willa and Iris also got along well with their choices for fashion, and she was a major help in choosing Iris all her dresses, jewelry and accessories, even though I was very sure she already had enough of such stuff in her room, being a marksinna. Finn was her tracker, and though her official home was the Kroners' place, Iris insisted that the palace was better, and Finn didn't disagree since he thought this was the place where all the tapestry, family trees traced back to centuries, books on everything that she needed to learn, etc. would be in their best.

It was a little awkward seeing Finn and Iris together, with Finn explaining stuff in his usual calm and emotionless voice, while Iris chattering her head off, and I wondered if I was jealous or not. Maybe not, I guessed; I was anyway not supposed to care about what he did or with which girl he roamed around. He would soon understand – maybe he already did – that he couldn't get along with another marksinna, especially the king's sister.

Iris spent a lot of time in the Secret Garden, and I wondered when she was there with Finn, would he also flirt with her by the same comment he had used when he had first introduced me to the Secret Garden "though it's not as beautiful when you're not around". But then, I didn't honestly care anymore, being well aware of the fact that now that I was already pregnant with someone and married to someone else, I didn't need a third person in all this.

Also with the developing friendship between the Trylle and Vittra, it was surprising when Tove once started talking about Iris's Vittra friends – the Vittra, who didn't follow the traditional system of changelings, had people closer to her age than the Trylle did, and occasionally some came here at Forening to visit Iris or Iris didn't even mind a trip to Ondarike.

I – as the queen – was also supposed to spend some of my time trying to educate her, and well, if I didn't know better, it was irritating explaining a short paragraph and getting a whole page worthy of words from her mouth in return. Once when Finn was walking in front of me (which made the scene all the more self-conscious and awkward) and Duncan behind me, I blurted out without thinking "Iris is so much like Tove, both of them had this feeling with the humans that they were going crazy."

Tove had told me sometime before that when he had been in the human world, he had seen people's auras involuntarily, been able to move stuff using his not-so-matured telekinesis, and had thought he had actually gone crazy. And so, when Finn had come to take him back to Forening, he had been relieved and had effortlessly accepted his chance to live a life where he wasn't all that crazy.

Iris had also been assumed to have some very unusual and creepy psychiatric problem. The only difference was that while Tove had not done much about his mental health except been worried, Iris's host parents had got her into a mental asylum where she had been observed, nutritioned through the blood vessels since due to her Trylle peculiarities she wouldn't eat like humans would, operated and been counseled.

"Well, she's made up of the same blood as Tove is, so it isn't supposed to weird out any of us when she turns out entirely like Tove." Finn wasn't expecting me to ask anything, but didn't not answer.

"But, then why did Tove get here at nineteen and she's here at sixteen? Especially when there was more danger during Tove's arrival with the Vittra than it is now?"

"The Kroners' have this blood thing – also the fact that they are green-toned – that their abilities are quite precious to the Trylle communities and there is a high chance that they would have more than just one ability. However this multiple and more advanced ability quality about them often reveals them to the humans as someone not exactly of the same genes.

"Tove saw auras around people's heads, heard strange noises that other humans couldn't hear, and could move things without using any physical strength, and he thought that all these things were driving him crazy. Only, he kept it more secretive than Iris had managed, but then what do you expect out of a talkative teenager who would word-vomit almost everything she has inside her brain to anyone.

"We were close to revealing the humans about our existence, only both me and Tove got lucky when I rescued him back here to Forening. And after that, we had some reason after stalking Iris through our network of changelings that she might be creating some unneeded attention towards us from the humans. And well, it turned out that we were quite right, so I got her back to Forening at this early age. Though that doesn't change the date of her debutante ball."

I nodded, though I doubt he had even seen me nod. The next few days continue like that; I hadn't noticed how much of the power I had consumed of my bracelet, until once I checked the surface and realized that about only one fourth of the smooth shiny part was left. From then onwards I started limiting usage of the drug bracelet, and hoped I could carry on like this.

Apparently Iris was given a time of about two and a half weeks to learn more about the trolls before her ball, and I felt kind of jealous knowing that while I had been struggling with just a few days before I mastered everything from a waltz to how the Trylle society worked, Iris comfortably spent her days.

She also had this markis who had come to have lunch in the mansion along with the Kroners, who would be her official trainer. Their talents weren't exactly the same, but in a way matched with each other, so he could easily explain all about it; or so I had assumed.

It was one night when I was probably feeling too claustrophobic to be able to sleep, so I just got up and went around in the palace corridors and hallways. I was practically naked in just a long satin housecoat, but didn't care since no one except some scheduled on the night guard would be awake, and most would be outside the mansion instead of inside it.

I wandered around for some time and then went up to a room that had a nice looking bed. Belatedly I realized that this was the very room Elora had stayed in when me and Tove had moved in to her enormous room. I didn't even bother to switch on the lights, and simply went in and crouched beside the bed lamp, lost in the memories of my mother. It was indeed sad that she had to be my mother for such a short time, when ironically she had been for eighteen years. But then a mother for just eighteen years also wasn't much of a very good record.

That was when I realized at hearing light whispers and laughing sounds that I was not alone in the room. I whipped back and saw a dark figure near the glass wall of the room. Judging from the loose strands coming out of the bun, it was a female, and based upon the body size, she wasn't very old. I got up and went towards whoever was there, and then noticed that the person was Iris.

She seemed to be sentimentally happy – smiling sadly at something I couldn't see – and was babbling something along with pauses, as if she too was listening to something else. "What the hell are you doing here?" I said, startling her.

Iris's instant reaction was to spin at my direction (I couldn't believe she actually didn't hear me enter), but after that she didn't say anything and just whispered "She's here; Wendy. I mean, I know I shouldn't call her Wendy, she's the queen afterall, but well, it's just so frustrating learning the entire name Wendy Luella Kroner nee Dahl. Oh well, I just learnt it."

For a moment I could just stand there and stare Iris babbling in whispers like an idiot, but then I said "Iris, come back here, whom are you talking to?" I knew it all sounded stupid, but couldn't think of better words to speak of.

"Elora." She said louder (probably in answer of my question) that caught me off guard. She was talking to Elora, and though there was a high chance that maybe she was just imagining things or having weird hallucinations, I still chose to get stunned over the fact that Iris could speak to someone who didn't even exist at the moment.

"How?" my voice made it clear how amazed I was by the idea.

"Well, that's like a really long story, but the night is also supposed to be, like, really long, and since it's clear that both of us are in no hurry to get back to our beds, I don't mind telling you the story. So, it starts as one of the prime reasons as to why my parents – uh, host parents, god I get so confused – sent me to the asylum. It was just that I kept hearing voices that no one else would hear, and they could hear me back too.

"I mean, I didn't always know who the person was, but sometimes I actually did. Whatever, I heard those creepy voices, mostly saying something like 'oh my god, I can't believe I'm actually getting to talk to you' or something like that. I mean, like, first those weirdoes themselves put in their mouthpieces in my earlobes and now they come all over like they are so amazed by me and can't believe that I actually exist.

"I mean, I could go snap directly at their faces that I don't believe that I'm getting to be the lucky one who gets chosen to hear all this trash that you're mouth's got to say. Well, and these people can also probably hear me when I whisper, so I would whisper something back to them. Well, it evidently made them happier knowing that I was even capable of speaking something.

"And sometimes maybe if I concentrate really hard, which is not as easy as it looks, though Finn assures me that one day I'll definitely be able to have hours of conversation with such people due to my concentration – okay, so if I concentrate hard and if there is also some cooperation from the other side, I even manage to see hallucinations of the people I'm talking to.

"Well, its creepy, since half the time the people with whom I'm conversing are dead. Okay, that sounds freaky, right; don't blame me, I didn't get to choose my abilities, or else I would have chosen something more pretty like being able to control impossible stuff or hypnotize people with your boobs. Well, I'll tell you how; it was my host grandma's funeral, and well, everyone was crying – except me of course, I would be having a cocktail party after her death – and it was all black people – not the race black, but people who were wearing black.

"And well, suddenly I heard my grandma's voice – her same old squeaky voice – saying something like 'god, you aren't even human Iris, I couldn't believe how my daughter managed to give birth to you'. I mean, could you ever imagine how shocking that would be; just being at someone's funeral, and then hearing the same person speaking something so rude about you. I would have literally been like 'yeah, it finally turns out that you were right, that your daughter had given birth to a much saner person, who had been switched at birth with a bitch like me' right now.

"And then, when we had gone to Rome for some family vacation, I literally got a heart attack hearing Julia Caesaria's voice. I mean, hell, now I've got an ancient princess's voice inside my head. Then, in Washington, we were posing outside the White House and suddenly it was John F. Kennedy who started talking to me. Well, those are just the famous personalities, but all were dead at the time I was hearing them. Weird."

"How did you know it was John F. Kennedy? Or Julius Caesar?" I asked quietly.

"There, there, here comes the confusion between Julius Caesar and Julia Caesaria, she's – that is Julia – is Caesar's daughter. And well, almost every person introduces himself or herself, and though ninety percent I have no idea who is being talked about, ten percent I still manage to know who they are. You know basically almost each conversational script from these dead people comes something like 'okay, so by the way, as you may not know I'm sir ABC and it's indeed a privilege to meet you'. And well, I'd be like, 'thanks very much sir ABC, but I'm not the least privileged having you poking around in my brain'."

"Well, if normally you're angry about hearing other people –"

"Dead people, I'd like to say. I can just talk to dead people. I mean, that way it's not that since I can also talk to you, so you are also a dead personality, it's just that I can speak to people from both sides – dead or alive. What?" she looked at me with my eyes closed in frustration.

Well, I was frustrated at how inconsiderate Iris could be while speaking, but that was when I realized that she could speak to dead people. I didn't know whether I was happy or angry or embarrassed as to why she had learnt many secrets about me or not, but at that moment all I could see or notice was the spark of a hope, even though it wasn't much of a hope.