Year 4
"I brought you some new books," Zelgadis said, unloading the latest bunch from his pockets.
Amelia had been about to rush to the kitchen to expand her supper preparations now that she was cooking for two rather than one, but she postponed that in favour of flipping through the new books. When she saw the illustrations of princesses, witches, and heroic youths, her eyes lit up. She quickly became so absorbed in reading that Zelgadis had to finish supper himself.
Amelia probably assumed he had picked the books just because he thought she'd like them but they were actually part of a cunning plan to learn more about the enchantment she was either under or trying to break. Most of the stories in the books involved enchantments being broken in one way or another. Zel figured that Amelia would naturally be most interested in the stories that were closest to her own situation so all he had to do was carefully but surreptitiously watch which stories she read the most often and look for patterns.
A few days later, he had definitely spotted a pattern. It made him more than a little uncomfortable, but he wasn't going to let embarrassment stand in the way of helping Amelia. He compared the stories she'd been reading or asking him to read to her to the ones she'd been ignoring one more time to see if there was any other common element he'd missed, but the pattern was very clear. He re-shelved the books and went out to talk to Amelia. She was in the garden, sprawled on a patch of clover between two flower beds with a book open in front of her, absorbed in yet another story that fit the pattern.
"Amelia, do you want me to kiss you?" he asked, trying to maintain a tone of clinical detachment and not blush.
Amelia sat up abruptly and stared at him as if she wasn't sure she'd heard him right.
"I said, do you want me to kiss you?" he repeated, definitely blushing now.
Amelia nodded enthusiastically.
Zelgadis knelt down in front of her. He wasn't usually a clumsy person but he suddenly felt awkwardly unsure of how he should sit or where to put his hands. He settled for putting them on his knees. He leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the lips. He pulled back and they studied each other's faces.
"Did that help break your enchantment?" Zel asked hopefully.
Amelia looked puzzled and shook her head.
"...Because you're not under an enchantment? You were just reading the stories about enchantments being broken by a kiss because you like romance, weren't you?" Zelgadis felt like an idiot.
Amelia looked enlightened. She hid a silent giggle behind her hand.
"Then why did you say you wanted me to kiss you?" Zel demanded.
Amelia took his face in her hands and kissed him again. It was unlike any sensation he had ever experienced before in his life. For a long moment, surprise and pleasure held him captive but then he gently pushed her away.
"No, we shouldn't start anything we can't continue. I'm a chimera, remember?"
That argument completely failed to dissuade Amelia. She looked at him admiringly.
"I'm prickly and rough to the touch. You don't want that, do you?"
Amelia reached out to show him again just how much she wanted him.
He caught her hands and held them so she couldn't get close enough to kiss him again. "I know the people here think we're in love with each other and practically living together, but they don't know who you really are. You are planning to finish this task of yours, whatever it is, and go back to your old life someday, right?"
Amelia nodded.
"And when you do, you'll find some handsome prince to be your true love. I don't want to be just an embarrassment from your past."
Amelia made a face at his mention of a handsome prince. She freed one of her hands and cupped his cheek with it. She looked into his eyes with such love that his breath caught in his throat. Even though everything he'd said was true, if she didn't care then neither did he. He leaned forward, almost without meaning to, and kissed her again.
That ended up being a much longer visit than usual.
When he did finally leave he only managed to stay away a few weeks before returning to knock on her door again. Amelia greeted him with a kiss that almost knocked him off his feet. Unfortunately, after only a few dozen more kisses she had to break away to rescue a pot on the stove that was threatening to boil over. It looked like she was in the middle of brewing medicine.
While she was tending to that, Zel took the opportunity to change out of his travel-stained clothes, but ran into a problem. "Amelia, where's my bedroom?" He had opened his bedroom door only to find that the room had mysteriously transformed back into a storeroom in the time since his last visit.
After removing the pot of medicine from the heat completely, Amelia came over and opened her own bedroom door. The mattress in her room was now back on the floor and twice its former width.
"No," Zelgadis breathed in dismay. "No, we can't. I know on my last visit we, um..." His blue face turned a purplish shade of red. "Well, you know... But that was just a careless moment of passion. We can't start sleeping together like, like we're married or something. You're still a princess and I'm still a chimera, and-"
Since Amelia couldn't argue back, as usual she chose to skip straight past arguing to winning. She cut off his words with a kiss, not a sweet and gentle kiss but a kiss intended to conquer. After a few seconds Zelgadis stopped trying to talk or push her away. After a minute, he let her pull him down onto the bed.
A few days later, Amelia found Zel at work with a chisel on a large block of wood. She touched the wood and tilted her head at him inquiringly.
"This is going to be the headboard for our new bed," he explained. "I'm carving it with scenes from some of your favourite stories. The Red Knight here, King Permeon of Elmekia and his Lancers here, the Fair Maid of Mane - hey!" He barely avoided blunting his chisel on his skin as Amelia launched herself at him and started covering his face with kisses.
"Maybe we can find some record of it in Taforashia? After all, it's from before the colony was founded," Lina suggested.
The threesome were in Sairaag and had just once again found that the trail of the knowledge they were seeking ended in water damage. It wasn't surprising, given that the ancient City of Magic had been turned into a steaming, waterlogged crater a few years previously, but it was frustrating. Fortunately, much of Sairaag's lost lore had been preserved in its daughter city, Taforashia, and the prince of that city was a friend of theirs.
Zelgadis dropped the ink-smeared clump of paper he'd been trying to pick apart and nodded.
A week later, at a crossroads, Zelgadis asked, "Do you mind taking a detour through Seyruun since we're in the area anyway? I have something I need to drop off."
"Playing errand boy for Amelia again?" Lina teased.
"Such is my fate," Zel agreed easily.
"Sure, why not? Gourry?"
"Fine with me," the swordsman said.
When they got to the palace, it turned out that Prince Phil was in the middle of a council session. Zel offered to leave Amelia's gift there with a note, but the servant told them to wait while he checked what the prince wanted them to do. To their surprise, he returned with the news that all three of them were invited to the council room. It wasn't the kind of honour that could be turned down, as much as they would have preferred to do so.
As they walked into the room, white-clad, turbaned men stared at them from all down the length of the large table. Prince Philionel was seated at the head of the table, as massive as ever in white and gold.
"Hi Phil!" Lina called out indomitably.
"Miss Lina," he acknowledged her with a nod. "I see you are as energetic as ever."
"You know me. I'll never change," Lina said with a nervous laugh.
Prince Phil turned his attention to the chimera of the group. "Mr. Zelgadis, you have something for me?"
"Uh, yes." Zelgadis looked around, feeling a bit awkward handing it over in such a setting. "Amelia knit you a sweater." He slid the bulky package, wrapped in paper to keep it clean and tied with a bow, down the smooth table to the prince. "She says you would have had it last winter if you weren't so big. She compared it to knitting two double-bed-sized blankets."
"Amelia said that? I thought she didn't talk!" Lina said.
"It involved a lot of pointing and making faces, but her meaning was clear enough. Why are you so hung up on the details?"
Prince Phil opened the package and held up the sweater. His eyes filled with tears. "My little Amelia made this for me with her own hands!" He hugged it to his chest.
"Amelia made that?" Lina muttered in surprise. "That looks nothing like your lousy scarf!"
"Practice," Zel said succinctly.
One of the councillors said in a tone completely lacking in warmth, "We called you here so that we could all hear your report on Princess Amelia."
Zelgadis tried to gather his thoughts quickly. "There isn't much to report since the last time I was here. She's switched two more beds from vegetables to herbs in order to keep up with demand for her spices and medicines and she had me dig two new vegetable beds to make up for it. She put up curtains. That's about it."
"You aren't hiding anything, are you?" the councillor asked suspiciously.
Zel thought guiltily about the change in their sleeping arrangements. "Of course not. Why would I?"
The councillor sat back and turned to Prince Phil. "I still find it troubling that this...young man is our sole source of information on your daughter. We have only his word that he actually found her and only his word that he has seen her since."
"Nonsense," the prince huffed. "Why just today he brought me this sweater my daughter made for me and at other times he's brought me all sorts of canned preserves and medicines."
"All things he could easily have bought in any village," the councillor persisted. There were murmurs of agreement all up and down the table.
"To what purpose?" Zel asked coldly.
The councillor gave him only a brief glance before continuing to address the prince. "How do you know that he isn't keeping the money you send her for himself and giving you these trinkets in exchange?"
"There's one problem with that theory," Zelgadis said, voice icy with rage. "He hasn't sent any money since the first time. Ever since then all I've been carrying back to Amelia have been letters and a few small presents of more sentimental than financial value."
Prince Phil nodded confirmation.
"How much money did you send the first time?" a different councillor asked in a puzzled tone.
"Five hundred gold pieces."
"And that was...three years ago? Then what's she been living on since then?"
Zelgadis smiled thinly, eye still icy. "She makes a good enough living as an herbalist and healer to buy the few things we can't grow or make ourselves. I believe she's spent about twenty of the gold pieces her father gave her, but she's earned several times that much in smaller coins from selling her potions. And, of course, I buy things with my own money too."
"So you'd have us believe you visit her every few months purely out of the goodness of your heart with no recompense at all?" the first councillor said mockingly.
"No, I don't visit Amelia out of the goodness of my heart!" Zelgadis said angrily. "I visit her because I like visiting her. She gives me friendship, good food and a roof over my head. For someone like me those are not things to take for granted!"
Prince Phil said soothingly, "Mr. Zelgadis has my full trust. He has always proven to be a true ally to Seyruun in the past, which is why I named him a knight of the realm, and I've seen no evidence to make me suspect he's been anything other than honest about Amelia since she vanished."
"Are you really content to allow him to be our sole contact with our princess?"
"Better one contact than none," Prince Phil said. "I've had people continue to look for her since Mr. Zelgadis is not at liberty to disclose her location, but no one else has had any success. What more would you have me do?"
The table erupted into low-voiced discussions.
"Gee, they really hate you, don't they, Zel?" Lina whispered.
"I'd noticed," he muttered back.
"But aren't you kind of doing them a favour by looking after Amelia and letting them know she's okay?" Gourry asked.
"So you'd think. It doesn't matter. I'm not doing it for them."
Prince Phil caught their eyes and waved a hand to give them permission to leave. Around him the council continued to argue fiercely. The threesome left the room without needing a second invitation.
On impulse, Zelgadis stopped by the bakery on his way home to Amelia. As he handed over a few copper coins in exchange for a strawberry-rhubarb pie, the baker gave him a knowing glance.
She said, "My sister's daughter was up at your house to buy some cough drops the other day and she saw something veeeerrry interesting. She says there's only one bedroom in the house these days and it has a double bed. Now, what do you have to say about that?"
"I would say that's none of her business, or yours," Zelgadis said coldly.
"Don't you think it's about time you two finally have a proper wedding?" the woman persisted.
Zelgadis left the shop without another word.
The mayor was waiting for him just outside. He said, "May I have a few words with you, Mr. Zelgadis?" He led Zel to the church and into his office. Besides being the town's mayor he was also the priest and lawyer although he made his real living from his farm just outside town. His good-natured and extremely competent son handled most of the day-to-day running of the farm in order to free the old man up to pursue his administrative roles. The mayor and Amelia had become good friends since she had taken on the role of town priestess. The hierarchy was extremely unclear since he ran the church and presided over all religious functions but she could perform actual miracles. However, they made it work based on unfailing mutual respect and a clear division of responsibilities.
"As you know, I've taken something of a fatherly interest in Amelia since she has no family of her own here," he began. "The word around town is that you two have moved from just living together to sleeping together. Do you have plans to get married?"
"We can't. How can Amelia take any vows without speaking or using her full name?"
"A nod's as good as an 'I do' as long as the intention is there, and since a wedding is all about recognition by the community, I think the name the community knows her by will serve just as well as the name she was born with."
"A wedding is all about the community?" Zelgadis repeated skeptically. "I thought it was about the couple getting married."
"Of course it's about the community. If all you wanted to celebrate was how much the two of you love each other, well, I'm sure whatever you get up to behind closed doors celebrates that just fine. No, a wedding is about the two of you making a promise to the rest of us that you'll take care of each other and any children you may have and that you won't screw around with anyone but each other. Without that kind of thing, you end up with households falling apart and women and children - and men, for that matter - being left without support. Then the community has to step in to pick up the pieces. It's a burden on everybody, and it just gets ugly. That's why in a small, close-knit community like this it's important to everybody that when a man and woman start sleeping together a wedding soon follows. Of course, it's preferable if the wedding comes first, but it seems it's a bit late for that in your case." He gave Zelgadis a piercing look.
Zelgadis found himself blushing furiously at the man's bluntness, but managed to answer with some dignity. "You know I will always take care of Amelia as long as she needs me, and I doubt I could find anyone else to 'screw around' with even if I wanted to, but I can't marry her."
"Why not?"
"How can I put this without revealing anything Amelia's forbidden me to tell you?" He thought for a minute. "Despite how she looks, Amelia actually comes from a rather wealthy and well-connected family. She may even be an heiress. She does have an older sister but she's been missing even longer than Amelia has and writes home only slightly more frequently. Amelia's family and, uh, 'community' would never accept her marrying someone like me. I mean, would you want one of your daughters to marry someone with my face who spends three-quarters of his time off searching for a cure? I know when we're here it seems like we belong together, but out there in the real world we really, really don't, and Amelia's told me that she is planning to go back to her old life someday."
"I see," the mayor said with a frown. He didn't look satisfied with that answer, but he did let Zelgadis continue on his way.
As Zel passed the last house on the way out of town, a little boy sitting on the rooftop catcalled. "Going home to your wife?"
His friend, sitting beside him, joined in, "Zelgadis and Amelia sitting in a tree k-i-s-s-i-n-g!" Both little boys burst into laughter.
Zelgadis glared at them and ran up the hill with slightly more than human speed.
"Unbelievable!" he shouted as he put the pie down on the table. "The people in this town need to learn to mind their own business!"
Amelia had been sitting at the table, drawing something on her slate. At his appearance, she slid around the table and into his arms. As she kissed him, he felt his irritation start to melt away. "It's so good to see you," he murmured once he was free to talk again.
Amelia tilted her head at him questioningly with an inviting smile.
"Oh, what I was upset about? Everybody I ran into in town on the way here told me I ought to marry you. It's hard to explain to them why I can't without telling them who you really are."
Amelia went rigid in his arms. She glanced over at her slate lying abandoned on the table. It was covered with sketches of wedding dresses.
"You can't be serious! You and me? Get married?" he said in disbelief.
Amelia's eyes narrowed. She shook off his embrace and flung a hand in the direction of the bedroom door.
"But that's different. That's here. Here I can be the man who translates for you, makes you furniture, chops your firewood and keeps you company, but out in the wider world you're a princess. When you go back to your real life you won't need me anymore. Have you been living here so long you've lost sight of the big picture?"
Amelia looked deeply annoyed. She imitated the way he'd unconsciously thrown his arms open when he said 'wider world', then mimed swinging a sword and casting a spell. Then, with an air of exasperation, she used a stiff arm to tap him on the shoulder.
"The royal council of Seyruun may accept me as your ally and even, just barely, as a knight of Seyruun, but they'd never accept me as your husband."
Amelia made a rude gesture in the direction of the imagined royal council.
"I mean, I'm a chimera and, even if I wasn't, I'm just a common mercenary."
Amelia touched his cheek with a look in her eyes that suggested she thought he was something much better than just a common mercenary.
She made gestures for 'true love', 'here', 'wider world', and 'forever and always'. Amelia had a habit of finding ringing phrases she liked in books and making up gestures for them. 'True love' and 'forever and always' were two such phrases.
"Your father likes me, I think - moderately well, anyway - but he might feel differently if he knew the full truth about our relationship."
Amelia stared at him incredulously. When he failed to respond to her facial expression, she pointed to him, made a hand gesture for talking, did an impression of her father, pointed to Zel again and finally to herself.
"No, I haven't told him. I haven't told anyone."
Amelia threw her hands out in a 'why not?' gesture.
"I don't know. I just don't want to tell them." It felt too personal to talk about, too valuable to share.
Judging by the look on Amelia's face, she found that explanation highly unsatisfactory. She pointed to her ring finger, then made a gesture of negation as sharp as the swing of a sword and pointed to the bedroom.
Zelgadis sighed regretfully. "You're right. We shouldn't be sleeping together. I said so in the first place but you were so...irresistible." His voice turned softly nostalgic. "I thought no one could ever love a chimera like me but then you offered yourself to me. How could I resist?"
He intended that as a compliment on her attractiveness and an expression of how much that moment had meant to him, but Amelia didn't seem to take it that way. She swelled up with indignation, stabbed an accusatory finger into his chest, and launched into a justice speech.
It had been quite a while since he had last seen her give a justice speech. Her current quiet country life didn't provide as much provocation as her more adventurous former life, and it was much harder to do without being able to speak. Zelgadis knew that he was supposed to feel chagrined by the scolding but instead he merely felt impressed and amused as he watched her rapid flow of impassioned gestures. It was almost like a dance. He didn't bother to try to interpret every phrase but he did catch a few of them like 'true love', 'betrayal' and 'false-faced scoundrel'. Amelia worked herself into such a frenzy that she ended up standing on top of the ten-foot-high cliff the house was built into.
When she finally slowed to a panting halt, he called up to her, "Why don't you come back down so we can discuss it calmly?"
She grudgingly jumped down and followed him back inside the house. He noticed with embarrassment that there were a cluster of people down in the town staring up at them.
"So how can we satisfy the town's demand that we get married without creating a situation that will be an embarrassment if you ever go home?" Zelgadis asked thoughtfully. "Hmm. The mayor said that a wedding is about a promise to the community."
Amelia nodded.
"He's given you that speech too? Well, maybe a wedding where you use the name 'Amelia the silent maiden of Shaid' will be valid here but not recognized in Seyruun? What do you think?"
Amelia looked deeply into his eyes and signed, slowly and emphatically, 'Forever and always or nothing.'
"But..."
Amelia lost her temper. She pointed, finger trembling with rage, toward the front door. Then, when he didn't move, she opened the door, shoved him out of it, and slammed it behind him.
Zelgadis stood there blinking in surprise. There were still people down in the town staring up at the house. "Fine," he decided. "If that's the way you want it, then fine! Ray wing!" The bubble of air that formed around him lifted him into the air and he zoomed off over the fields and trees so that he could get back to the road without having to pass through the town again.
Author's Note: The heroes that Zel carved into the headboard are not canonical but the places they're from are. Just thought you'd like to know ;-)