~A Wild Heart~
Chapter Nineteen
~~~ooooo~~~
"You're quiet today."
"I've had a lot on my mind," Aeris admitted.
The fairy didn't press her, but simply waited for her to go on.
"I've been thinking," she began reluctantly. "Is there nothing we can do? First, the river, then the wells. Now you tell me the people on the other side of the forest are building their settlements toward the stream and dirtying the water wherever they go. Is it not something that can be changed?"
"That is up to the people living up north. Perhaps when their living conditions get to the point that their very survival is at risk, they will choose to live more wisely."
"By then, they won't have any other choice."
"No, I don't suppose they will."
"Can't you do anything? Won't you help us?"
He was silent for a long moment. "It is not my place to intervene in human matters."
"Not even if I ask you to?"
"It is forbidden."
"What about wishes?"
Cloud's forehead knitted in a frown. "What about them?"
His lack of enthusiasm was hardly encouraging, but she had come this far and couldn't back down now. "What if you grant me a wish?" she asked. "In the case of wishes, fairies are allowed to interfere in human matters, aren't they?"
His eyes searched hers, as if to make sure she was serious. "If only it were that easy. We could just wish that humans would stop harming the earth. But that's not the way it works. Wishes won't do any good in the long run. The problem will just come back, bigger and more difficult than before, along with all the other problems that will have come out of granting the wish. Someone else fixing your troubles for you will not make things any better if you don't learn from your mistakes and put forth the effort to resolve your own problems or prevent them from happening again, and you will regret the wish someday. Throughout history, humans have always shown that they have to learn things the hard way."
"But we have learned. We're not as wasteful as we were before," Aeris tried to reason. "If I could ask a wish of you, I'd wish for you to help us find water."
"You got this idea from somewhere else." His expression did not change but she thought she heard an edge in his voice. "This didn't come from you."
Disheartened, she looked away. "I'm sorry," she said. "I won't ask again."
~~~ooooo~~~
"A little bird told me someone here saw something."
"Oh?" Tifa asked, trying to pretend an indifference she didn't feel at her visitor's words. "You'll have to help me out here, Letty. Did this little bird also happen to say who it was and what it was that he or she saw?"
"Well, yes and no. But from what I gather and what with the rumors going around, I daresay it's pretty clear who it was. Zack."
Luckily for Tifa, her neighbor's gaze had fallen upon the vegetables on the table and so she did not see the startled look on her face. She moved around the table slowly, perusing the small harvest as Tifa finished crimping her pie and set it aside.
"I see your garden's still putting food on your table." Leticia selected a zucchini and cocked a brow at Tifa.
Tifa gave a nod. "Please, take what you need."
She beamed. "Thank you, dear."
"About what Zack saw..." Tifa prompted.
"Eh?" Letty murmured absently, picking another zucchini and dropping it inside her basket. "Oh, that. Right. Supposedly, he saw something extraordinary from the forest...or in the forest, can't really say I remember which."
"I see." Tifa's response was curt, but the other woman appeared oblivious to it. "If he did see something, I doubt anyone of us would really call it extraordinary. We all think we see things from time to time, do we not? And some of us do see things."
"Exactly so," Letty agreed brightly. "But I think this time it might be...different."
"Different?" she echoed. "What makes you say that?"
"Because it sounds like there's more to it than what he's told his friends. But what is he not telling them? And why?"
"I don't get it!" Tifa burst out. "I don't see what all this fuss is about! Even if he had seen something, he wouldn't be the first person to have done so and he definitely won't be the last! Who knows how many people have seen things but are smart enough to keep their traps shut?"
Leticia's eyebrows shot up to her hairline. "No one's making a fuss, Tifa. We are just worried, as good neighbors ought to be. Our families look out for one another, do we not?"
Desperate, she cast about for something to throw her visitor off of Zack's scent. "Well, then, maybe you should worry about me! Remember when Martha and I brought you those mushrooms? I thought I saw a fairy in the forest then! In fact, I'm sure of it! She was standing in front of me, as close as you are now, and then she...wasn't there."
Letty dismissed her confession with a wave of her hand. "That's nothing to get excited about. You just came across her by accident, right, lass?"
"Y-yes..." She gaped at Ivan's wife. It was not at all the reaction she'd been expecting. "A-as it was with Zack, I'm sure."
"But you weren't with him, were you?"
"I didn't have to be. We grew up together."
"That doesn't mean anything. A man can have secrets, even from his wife."
"Not from me, Zack doesn't," Tifa insisted stubbornly. "I know him better than anyone else. If he saw anything, believe me, I'd be the first person he'd tell."
"That's a shame," Letty said. "I thought, hoped...he might have a hunch about when they might show up."
She frowned at the strange answer and chewed her bottom lip. Zack had no such knowledge about the comings and goings of fairies, but there was someone else who was on intimate terms with one of them who did. But Tifa was not about to make things worse at home by telling a woman who had a fascination for all things fairy about Aeris' unusual beau. "Was it Ivan who told you about Zack? Did he send you here?"
"Goodness, no." Letty gave a little laugh. "Ivan wouldn't concern himself with such matters and he doesn't really believe in these things, whatever he says. It was Dottie."
"Dottie!" Tifa exclaimed. "But...what-who told her—?"
"Jason, of course," she said, as though it should be obvious. "Men talk at home and women pick up on things that they don't. And I think she might have said she's been talking to Aeris too. My dear girl, don't look so worried. I'll just tell Dorothy she and Jason have got nothin' to worry about. And Lizzie and my own Anna, too, of course, and Fanny and..."
Dottie and Jason, Tifa thought dazedly, barely listening as their neighbor prattled on cheerfully. She hadn't even realized the two were good friends. But Letty was right about one thing. Men talked and women picked up on the talk. She twisted her apron between her fingers uneasily, anxious for her housemates to come home.
~~~ooooo~~~
"Why, Aeris? Why do you keep on meeting this-this fairy?"
"Zack..." She gazed helplessly at the young man who had apparently followed her again to the old well without her being aware of it.
"You have to stop this! What will people think—?"
The air seemed to shimmer and wave, and in a flash of blinding silver light, a woman stood before them.
Even without the glow or wings of her true form, the perfection of her face and figure was a sight to behold—she was what legends were made of. A being of such radiance and dazzling beauty, Aeris could only stare open-mouthed while Zack was shocked into silence. The woman was small and fine-boned, but she had a presence that made her seem much taller and grander, and an air about her that commanded deference and respect despite the fact that she had not uttered a single word. With hair the color of moonbeams and eyes a tawny gold, there was no mistaking who she was. In the tales, there was only one fairy who fit that description and she had been in the stories almost since man first discovered fire. The most beautiful fairy of all.
And the most powerful.
She was the very last person anyone, human or fairy, would want to cross.
"Mother?" The fairy standing beside Aeris was the first to speak, breaking her out of the spell that had robbed her of speech. "What are you doing here?"
"Enough, son." The woman's voice was soft and light, but had a quality to it that gave one no doubt she was used to issuing orders and being obeyed. "This nonsense must cease today."
"M-mother?" Aeris squeaked.
"The fairy queen?" Zack choked out.
"This has gone on long enough," the fairy went on, speaking to the blond figure alone. "Because you are my son, I looked the other way but your continued open defiance has caused a stir among the other fairies. Concerns and questions of favoritism have begun to reach my ears and I cannot ignore your behavior any longer." Without warning, the golden gaze turned toward Aeris, who was so flustered that the fairy queen had deigned to look at her, her thoughts immediately scattered and her voice left her again. She tore her eyes away from that perfect countenance only to have them alight upon the flower woven into the pale hair above a fine, pointed ear that gleamed like it was made from drops of golden sun.
"Hear me, mortal." The voice had taken on an imperious note. Unable to resist the pull in it, Aeris returned her gaze to the queen's face and found herself suddenly powerless to move, her eyes locked with a pair of glowing amber ones, her feet rooted to the ground. "I am deeply indebted to you for saving my son's life and I would gladly give you anything you want. Anything but him. Him I cannot give. Ask anything else of me and it will be yours." Her eyes glittered with something Aeris couldn't quite put her finger on and then she wasn't thinking anymore, only listening and yielding. "I can grant you the wish you asked of him the other day if you like. Just say the words and it shall be done. But you must stop seeing him. There is much about fairies that you do not know. Our two races are far more different than you think. If you persist in this, know that you will bring doom to him and grief to all of us."
Aeris opened her mouth to obey, but another voice spoke up first. "Stop it, Mother." The voice was cold, harsh, jarring Aeris from the warm, pleasant atmosphere the queen's voice had lulled her into. "Release her this instant. You will not compel her against her will."
Aeris blinked rapidly and shook her head, trying to clear the fog in her head.
"She has done nothing wrong." Cloud sounded furious as he had never before. "You have no right to do this. Just because you are the queen does not mean you can interfere with her life or mine."
"I come, not as the queen but as your mother." The way she turned and gave him all her attention suggested Aeris and Zack might not have been there for all the notice she took of them. "And as your mother, I have every right to look after you. It is my right and my duty to take care of you, even if you think you no longer need it." Cloud looked like he was going to say something to that but she spoke again, her voice soft once more, entreating, not at all like a queen but a doting mother with her dearly loved, if recalcitrant, child. "My son, we both know this cannot end well for you."
"No," he said, but his face, too, had softened and there was no trace of anger left in his voice. "We don't know that."
"Yes, we do. A human and a fairy have no chance of being together to speak of."
"That's not true," he countered, and Aeris saw surprise flit across the fairy queen's face and doubt flicker briefly in the golden depths of those lovely eyes. "Do you think I don't know the truth, Mother? You're not the only one with secrets. I have the gift, too. I know what Grandmother and the others like her saw in the sky on the night I was born. I've known of it since I was a little boy."
His mother looked sharply at him, the look in her eyes like pain. "You are still a little boy," she said, and there was a tremor in her voice. "My little boy. Yes, you've grown up, much too soon and far more quickly than our kind normally do, but you still have a lot of growing and learning to do, and I will always do everything I can to protect you."
"Even if that means hiding the truth from me?"
At her son's unrelenting stare, the queen gave a sigh of defeat. "Perhaps it was wrong of me, but I was just trying to shield you from what can only cause you pain."
"That is for me to decide, Mother." His voice lowered and although Aeris could detect no hint of anger or threat in it, the fairy queen's face paled at his next words. "I know that there is a way. I know it can be done."
"My son, do not speak so lightly of such things. Just hearing you utter them is breaking my heart." The queen held a hand out to him beseechingly. "You've felt it. You don't know what it is but a part of you recognizes it. We all do. The earth resounds with the loss of fairies before you who have forsaken all for the love of a mortal and the rest of us have to live with the emptiness and sorrow that their choices have inflicted upon us forever. No matter what you do, you will be the one to suffer. I cannot let you do this."
"I do know what it is. Deep down, I think I always suspected it, and Father finally admitted it when I asked him." The fairy queen's shoulders sagged and the hand she proffered to him fell as Cloud continued, "I went to him on the eve of my fifth birthday and he revealed everything to me. I've known of it and the truth about me for twelve years. Mother, I've been watching the stars my whole life, waiting for everything that has been foretold to happen."
"And I have been dreading it," his mother said quietly. "Oh, I have been dreading it. I know of your gift. I knew of it on the morning you were born because of the flowers that appeared at your birth. And when the ash chose to bind itself to you, I wanted to fade. It was the only time I have ever felt that way. And it may have been poorly done of me but I fought it, tried to deny it, did everything to keep you from discovering your gift or learning what your grandmother saw, but I see now it was all for naught."
"You can't protect me forever, Mother."
She closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath before opening them again. "If it was within my power, I would do whatever it takes to make this happen for you. But it is out of my hands. It is out of both of our hands. If you know everything else, you must know that as well." She looked at her son and held her hand out again. "Love, you've never doubted me. Will you not believe me now and trust me in this?"
His body visibly relaxed, but his face was still uncertain. "Mother…" he took a step toward her and hesitated. Glancing back at Aeris, he ran a hand through his hair in indecision. "Aeris…"
Aeris gazed back at him in silent anguish. She didn't know what had just transpired but she sensed that it had been very important.
"Come." His mother beckoned him. "We can talk about this at home."
Aeris' foot slipped forward but a hand suddenly clamped around her arm, holding her back.
"Don't be foolish," Zack murmured in her ear. "That's the fairy queen. We have no business meddling in the affairs of their kind."
The bright blue eyes holding Aeris' never wavered. Cloud gave an almost imperceptible nod before he turned back to his mother. She took another step...
The hand on her arm tightened like a vise. "Let him go."
"Cloud…" His name was but a whisper as she watched him take the fairy queen's hand and the two of them vanished.
"It's time to end all of this," Zack said flatly.