~A Wild Heart~
Chapter Twenty
~~~ooooo~~~
"Zack, Aeris, we need to talk."
Tifa saw Aeris' mouth tighten as she set her staff by the door and hung her cloak on a wall hook. Her eyes slid to Zack who was sitting at the table, staring mutely at a grain in the wood as he had been doing since he came home.
"Can we do this later?" Aeris placed her hat on top of her cloak and swept down the hall toward her room with her basket.
"Aeris!"
The shepherd girl spun around, eyes flashing with green fire. "Why don't you just talk to Zack?" she asked tightly. "Maybe he has something he'd like to share with you. In fact, he might even want to tell you about how he followed me again this morning."
Tifa glanced back and forth between her housemates but neither one seemed inclined to talk. She let out a sigh of exasperation. "Look, whatever happened this morning, you'll just have to sort it out between the two of you whenever you're ready to do so. I don't really care—"
"No, you wouldn't."
The resentment in the other girl's voice made Tifa's own temper flare. "What is that supposed to mean?"
"It means that Zack can do no wrong in your eyes. If it had been him meeting with a fairy and I was the one who had followed him, you would still side with him."
"I wouldn't!"
"Yes, you would." Aeris gave a bitter laugh. "We both know you would."
"Fine," Tifa retorted hotly. "So what if I would? That is neither here nor there. Just remember, he is not the one seeing a fairy. You are."
"How could you—"
"I didn't follow you." The words were sullen, reluctant, as if they'd been dragged out of him.
"No?" Aeris turned on Zack. "Then how did you happen to be where no one else ever goes and where you know I've met him before?"
"I followed you, but not the whole way. I knew you would be meeting him, so I just waited at the old Miller farm until I saw you coming up the road and then I followed you. If you had looked up, you would have seen me. I wasn't trying to hide."
"You couldn't have said something or made a sound?"
"I thought you always look where you're go—"
"All right, that's enough, both of you!" Tifa said sharply, annoyed at the pair of them. "This is not why I wanted us to talk. There is gossip going around, rumors of people seeing things they shouldn't..."
Aeris shrugged. "There is little else to do besides gossip out here."
"You don't understand. I had a visitor this morning."
She saw both her companions stiffen. "A visitor, " Aeris repeated, an arrested expression on her face. "As in..."
"No," she said quickly. "Not that kind of visitor. Letty. She was asking questions."
"Why? What kinds of questions? What did you tell her?"
Tifa was stung. "I didn't tell her anything."
"They should just mind their own business."
Tifa felt her jaw drop. She could hardly believe her ears. "I'm tired, Aeris," she said, rubbing her eyes and resisting the urge to also rub her ears. "I'm tired of having to watch every little thing I say around people we've known all our lives and who are like family because now we can't trust anyone anymore. I'm tired of worrying that every time someone opens their mouths, they're going to say they've found out and worrying about what they will do. It's not fair that you've gotten us into this situation and now we have to lie to help you keep this fairy a secret."
"I didn't want this either," Aeris said fiercely. "I never wanted to put you into a position like this. Do you think I like it any more than you do?"
"But you made the choice to see him. Zack and I, we didn't have any say in this."
"And you, Zack? Is that how you feel too? Do you agree with Tifa?"
Zack's eyes fell back to the table. "You always knew how I feel about this."
Aeris closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them again, defiance burned brighter than ever in the green pools. No, not defiance. It was something else. Something Tifa could not name or she would be acknowledging the very thing she had been taught was forbidden.
"It was never up to either of you who I choose to see or meet. If you would have left it alone, left me alone, none of this would be happening now." The same emotion she saw in Aeris' eyes was in her voice. Tifa met her squarely in the eyes, refusing to back down from it.
"We were worried about you," Zack said quietly. "How could we have known what was really going on?"
"Regardless of our part in this matter, you are putting all of us in danger by seeing him," Tifa pointed out.
"How?" Their housemate challenged. "Will we be rounded up and burned at the stake? By who? The neighbors?"
Tifa shivered. "Don't let anyone hear you say that."
"You're being silly. We're done talking here."
"Ask yourself this then, Aeris," Tifa said loudly, stopping her in her tracks again. "If you're not afraid, why haven't you told anyone about him? Why not just tell everyone and be done with it? Admit it, you know what you're doing is wrong and you're scared of what the consequences might be."
"It is not wrong to love someone just because he is not human. He is still a man. And I'm not afraid for myself, Tifa. Not like that. I'm afraid..."
"Of what? Are you afraid for him? Do you think anyone could hurt him? Even if they wanted to, he's a fairy!"
Aeris looked steadily at her. "You know what frightens me even more? The fact that harming him is the first thing that came to your mind. I was only going to say that I feared everyone would disapprove, like you and Zack do, and try to come between us. I was afraid I would never get to see him again..." She shook her head. "Did I ever know you at all?"
Tifa flushed as Aeris stormed off. Heaving a deep sigh, she pulled a chair back from the table and plopped down with a heavy thud.
After a long moment of silence, she raised her head to look at Zack. "Well, that went well," she said at last, shooting him a rueful grin. "What a mess."
He didn't return the smile. "Considering who his mother is, I doubt anyone could hurt him anyway," he scoffed.
Tifa was completely lost. "Wait..." she said weakly. "What does his mother have to do with this?"
"She's the fairy queen."
Tifa gaped at him in horror. "The... Did you say the fairy queen?" she asked in a strangled whisper.
"He never even told her about his mother." His mouth drew into a thin line. "She didn't know who she was."
Tifa groaned and hid her face behind her hands. "This is only getting worse and worse." A sudden thought occurred to her—she dropped her hands, stared across the table at Zack. "What was she like? Did she look anything like the stories say?"
He scowled at her. "I don't see what that has to do with anything."
"I see she did," she said wryly, amused despite herself. But their troubles came rushing back, rejecting any attempt to be held at bay. "Zack, what are we going to do? The neighbors are going to find out. What then? We can't protect her. We won't be able to."
"We have to stop her."
"How?"
He let out a sigh. "I wish I knew, Tifa. I wish I knew."
~~~ooooo~~~
For three days Aeris didn't see him. There were no flowers in the morning but she still made the trip to the old well. It was not the first time he hadn't come but she felt this time it was different. His mother had convinced him, she thought despairingly, staring at the peeling white paint of her windowsill for the third day in a row. On the fourth morning, when she forced herself out of bed and discovered a small white lily just beginning to flower lying on her window, she wept silent tears of joy.
But three days of worry had taken their toll on her, and on him, too, it seemed. Neither spoke much and although she knew he was a man of few words, she could tell there was more to his reticence this time. Desperate, she attempted to start a conversation several times but couldn't find much to talk about and when she did it was of trivial matters. The events of their last meeting and the abrupt way it had concluded hung between them like a herd of elephants they were both trying their best to pretend was not there.
"You're just like her," she finally blurted out the matter on both of their minds. "Aren't you?"
He knew exactly what she was getting at. "My mother and I are just ordinary fairies."
The splendid creature Aeris had beheld at the edge of the forest was anything but ordinary. And the same was true for him, whose perfect features were second to none.
"She is the queen of the fairies."
"Being a queen is as much a burden as it is an honor. You are bound by countless duties that most are lucky not to have."
"She is very beautiful," Aeris said softly. She could hardly be blamed for thinking that the love and admiration that appeared on his face were genuine, or being transfixed by how it made what was already an astounding visage doubly so.
"I certainly think so."
"Any woman who stands beside her pales in comparison."
The smile on his face faded. "I think you are as beautiful as she is."
Her heart skipped a beat.
He brought his hand up and she saw that he was holding a small blue flower, its delicate petals just barely fluttering in the breeze.
"Where did you get that?"
"Here."
"I didn't see it—"
The fairy brushed back a few strands of loose curls from her face and tucked the flower behind her ear. "Shall I tell you the story of the moon-gazer?"
"The moon-gazer?"
"It's the name of the flower." Strong hands stroked her hair gently. There was so much power in those hands but when he touched her, all she felt was safe, protected, and deeply cherished. "Would you like to hear it?"
"I would love to."
"It is an old tale that has been told to every fairy in the cradle since before man walked the earth," he began. "When you look up at the moon, what you don't know is that she is not alone. She has an infinite number of companions with her at all times. They are quite small, even by our standards, and thus, cannot be seen from this distance. Except for their light. It is on the nights when they come out from behind their mistress to dance merrily about her that the face of the moon looks brightest for they, too, are filled with the light of the heavens."
Aeris listened, completely mesmerized by his voice and the magic in the words of the tale he told.
"'Tis said that at the dawn of the world, when the moon was passing through the sky, some of these companions became so enamored with the new world they saw that they rushed forth to explore it and did not heed her cries for them to stop. They fell to the earth and were banished forevermore from the sky. And so, they became the first forms of life to appear on this planet. But they were not of this world and were not meant for it. As the sun rose in the eastern sky, its overly bright rays drove the moon before him in his path and her companions on the ground began to fade with the light of the moon as she slowly disappeared over the edge of the world. When she made her way back around to them once more, her tears fell upon the place her companions were last seen and where her tears fell, tiny, bright lights began to grow out of the ground.
"The flowers don't need the mushrooms to give off light. In fact, it is said that the mushrooms have achieved the ability to emit light because of the flowers they have taken under their protection. The moon never left. Each day after the sun has made his journey around the world, she follows him and takes her turn across the night sky and looks down upon the planet, and the flowers look to her face but they are ashamed and so they hide under the mushroom caps and only peer out at her." A rare smile crossed his face, brilliant blue eyes aglow with a look she was very accustomed to seeing now as they skimmed over her face. "They yearn for their mistress and won't forget where they come from. They are eternal. For every flower that gets plucked, another one grows. Their number has remained unchanged since the beginning and will remain so even unto the end of the world."
In the hushed silence that followed, Aeris could hear her heart beating, each thump in her chest painful to bear.
"Aeris?" His voice was soft, a balm to the pain in her heart and in her soul. "What's wrong?"
She swallowed the lump in her throat. "To be separated forever..." she whispered. "I can't imagine."
He caught her hand in both of his, squeezed it gently. "But they're not truly separated."
Her heart still ached, but she lifted her other hand to cover his, gave him an answering squeeze.
When dusk came and she kissed him farewell, tears seeped out from under her eyelashes.
"Aeris?"
He pulled back, stared at her in consternation.
"I'm just so happy we met." She smiled at him through her tears and only kissed him again.
~~~ooooo~~~
"She's seeing him today. Look at her." His gaze remained fixed on the back of their companion leaving with her flock.
"It's the flowers," he heard Tifa murmur at his back.
"What are you talking about? What flowers?"
"The flowers, the wild lilies. She has vases full of them in her room but she only comes home with them sometimes."
Zack's jaw clenched. "You think he's giving..."
"Yes. And...since she's so happy this morning, my guess is she just got another one."
He curled his fists. "How... Why does she keep...?" With a groan, he let his head fall back, closed his eyes.
"I don't know, Zack. I don't understand it either." Behind him, he heard Tifa's footsteps retreat further back into the room. "But where he goes, another is sure to follow."
Zack expelled a long, painful breath and opened his eyes. "Sorry?" Turning, he saw her at the table, wrapping a slice of pecan pie for his lunch. "What did you say?"
"Nothing. I was just thinking out loud."
"That's a bad habit in a place like this," he tried to jest.
"Not much choice when I only have the animals for company." Her smile didn't quite reach her eyes. "I wish this was a raspberry cake, Zack," she said apologetically.
He spared the pie a glance and looked back up at her with a smile that was more sincere. "Pecan will do just fine," he reassured her.
"Say, Zack, have you ever thought...wondered...if maybe...?"
"Wondered what?" Zack asked quizzically, looking into her pretty face, her brown eyes worried. "What are you thinking? Spit it out, Tifa."
"I know this might sound silly but what if we... what if there was a way we could undo all of this?"
It was a question he'd asked himself a million times and still didn't have an answer for. A word dropped here, a sentence there, carefully thought out lest they roused suspicion, but there too, he'd been defeated—trying to pick the minds of his friends and neighbors had yielded ideas that were questionable at best. "How? How would we even do that? Catch him and ask him nicely to stop seeing her? What if that doesn't work? Should we threaten him or hurt him? How would we even catch him in the first place? It's not like she'd give us a helping hand."
"No, not that. Aeris would never forgive us if we hurt him. But there might be someone else who could undo all of this."
"Someone else?" His eyes narrowed. "Tifa, what are you not telling me?"
"I... Nothing," Tifa said hastily. "I was just being foolish. Forget I said anything."
Note: This is just a little note of apology to the readers. I realize this chapter took me a while to write, but there have been some exciting changes in my life and I am sorry to say that updates may continue to be slow for a while. Time is more limited than ever. However, this story will be finished, I promise all of you that. I have the last chapter written. Unfortunately, I just need to flesh out all the other chapters in between (which is a lot more work than I initially thought) because I definitely don't want to be cutting out certain things from it just because I want to finish this up. Happy reading and I hope to see you all around!