It was clearly a dismissal, but Orlain held his ground. “Her mother has asked that I serve as her envoy from time to time, bringing news to the princess,” he said.
“Excellent,” Jaxon said heartily. “You can leave messages in the cairn. Someone checks it every couple of days.”
“I will not want to leave a message,” Orlain said calmly. “I will wish to speak with Zara directly.”
I had to think about it for a moment. Was that the first time during this whole trip that Orlain had used my name instead of calling me “princess”? Maybe.
Orlain was still speaking. “How will I accomplish that? Will you take me deeper into the forest so that I know where the boundaries of Alora lie? Is there a landmark I can look for that will let me know I am close?”
Jaxon eyed him consideringly. “You could always wait beside the cairn until someone spots you and brings Zara to see you,” he suggested.
“I would rather have more direct access,” Orlain replied.
“Landmarks are rare here in the forest,” Jaxon said. “It would be hard to describe our route to you.”
“Then I will have to travel with you today so I can find Alora when I return.”
“The aliora have not always had a happy history with men,” Jaxon said in a regretful voice. “They are not eager to lead humans to their doorways.”
“I’m sure they’re not,” Orlain replied. “I will try not to intrude upon their solitude. I am not interested in Alora or its residents. All I care about is Zara and her well-being.”
Jaxon burst out laughing. “If you spent half a day with the aliora, you would be interested in them!” he said. “Come with us, then, just to the edge of the kingdom. I am afraid I cannot invite you any nearer than that.”
Orlain nodded. “Let me check on the horses and get the princess’s bundles.” He paused to give me a brief, very serious look. “Wait for me while I cross the river and come back.”
I nodded dumbly. I had stood mute during this whole exchange, amazed at the animosity bubbling beneath their civil words. Or maybe the animosity was just coming from Orlain, who had as good as said out loud that he didn’t trust Uncle Jaxon.
That was almost as astonishing as the idea that Orlain cared enough about me to bother distrusting Jaxon at all.
Orlain plunged back into the river, moving easily against the punishing current. Jaxon glanced down at me and winked.
“What do you say? Shall we run off while he’s still in the water?”
I wasn’t entirely certain he was joking. “All my things are with the horses,” I said.
“Everything you need you can find in Alora,” he said.
Not my potions, I thought. Not the note that Keesen had thrust into my hands right before he climbed into the coach. I love you Zara was all it said in Keesen’s broad, almost illegible writing. “My life is so strange already,” I said in a soft voice. “I will need some familiar things around me.”
“And even the familiar seems strange in Alora,” Jaxon said. “We’ll wait for him.”
Orlain was back with all speed, my saddlebags over his shoulder, and we set out once more into the forest. The woods were just as dark and shadowy on this side of the Faelyn River, but the gloom didn’t seem so deep. Maybe that was due to the proximity of Alora’s magic. Maybe it was due to my excitement at finally coming to the end of the journey. Maybe it was due to the fact that I couldn’t stop thinking about Orlain. Who had held me so tightly as we crossed the river and who had argued with my uncle Jaxon on my behalf.
Was it possible he didn’t hate me after all?
Because, of course, I had been in love with Orlain for years.
If there were landmarks to be seen along our journey, none of them was visible to me. I couldn’t tell how Jaxon was finding his way through the untracked acres of forest, and I couldn’t believe Orlain would ever be able to retrace our route. But now and then Jaxon would point to something—a tree with a particular bend, perhaps, or a vine hung with brilliant red blossoms—and Orlain would nod and we would all keep walking.
We had been hiking through the forest for about an hour when Jaxon came to an abrupt halt. “What most men don’t understand about Alora is how changeable its boundaries are,” he said. “They are not defined with a river or a chasm or a stone fence, as human borders are. You cannot measure them precisely with a surveyor’s tools or find them with a compass. They shift. At some point you are within them and at some point without. But here is where that moving line begins.”
Orlain looked around, as if impressing on his memory the precise placement of the trees, the peculiar slant of the sun, at this very spot. “Then this is where I will come when I have news to share with Zara,” he said. He handed my saddlebags to Jaxon, who slung them over his left shoulder.
I risked a quick look at Orlain. I felt suddenly shy with him, which infuriated me and made me awkward at the same time. “When will you be back?” I asked.
“I will try to come ten days from now,” he said.
“You’ll lose a couple of days each way just on travel,” Jaxon observed.
Orlain nodded. “I know. Otherwise I would come back once a week. If I am here every ten days, I will be able to spend a week at the castle before I set out again.”
“I’ll look for you then,” I said. I resumed my soulful expression and held out my hand to him, a sweet, brave princess bestowing her favor on a faithful knight. “Thank you so much for your care in bringing me here to Alora.”
He took my hand in one of his. He made a fist with his other hand and touched it gently to his forehead, a mark of great respect. “Don’t cause your uncle any trouble,” he said with a grin. “Don’t make him sorry he took you in.”
I was so annoyed I jerked my hand away. “Don’t get lost on your way back home,” I huffed.
Orlain nodded a farewell at Jaxon, then turned on his heel and strode back through the forest toward the river. I only watched him from the corner of my eye, but I saw that he did not once look back.
“Interesting young man,” Jaxon commented.
I hunched a shoulder. “Do you think so? I find him very ordinary.”
Jaxon laughed. “Well, there are a few young men in Alora who might help you forget him.”
“I don’t need help forgetting him,” I said. I was tired of talking about Orlain. “So where’s Alora? How do we get in?”
Jaxon resettled the strap over his shoulder and took my hand. “We step this way—we wait for a strange shiver across our skin. No? Then we take a few steps in this direction, and wait a moment. Nothing. Then we walk forward with our eyes half shut, as if waiting to feel spiderwebs brush across our cheeks.”
He moved slowly but determinedly in each direction as he spoke, tugging me behind him. I had to admit my whole body was tingling with anticipation, but apparently it wasn’t quite the sensation I would feel when we finally did cross into Alora.
“Then you look around to see if the air seems to hold a sparkle. Look—see? That patch of sunlight sifting down. It’s brighter than it should be, don’t you think?”
Indeed, it was almost incandescent. Jaxon increased his pace as he pulled me toward the eerily glowing shaft of sun; I approached with a touch of trepidation. It was so vivid, so alive with color, I thought it might sear my skin. But Jaxon and I stepped together through the dazzle, and I suffered no ill effect except a sudden wash of warmth across my bare cheeks.
“And now we are in Alora,” he said.
Impossible to describe Alora.
It was not a town or a village the way I knew them, yet there were clusters of buildings marking either side of what could have been a road. But these were not houses or castles or other familiar structures, not like the buildings of men. There was a room, perhaps, set out under a wide fanning branch of some exotic tree. Perhaps there was a ladder of sorts, straight bars of wood tied to a broad trunk, and twenty feet above the ground a low platform nestled in the branches. Now and then I saw fre
estanding structures, haphazard piles of wood and stone that might be divided into two levels—but they had few walls and nothing that resembled a roof. I could peer into most rooms as we passed and gather an impression of soft pillows, wide mats, transparent curtains fluttering around open bowers.
Aliora were everywhere.
They gathered at the side of the road to watch us pass, hung down from the tree branches to stare as we went by. They were all narrow-faced and spindly-thin, with unnervingly long arms and legs. Their faces were gentle, curious, smiling, and everywhere they stood, an evanescent glow built up around them. It was as if moonlight had mated with a weeping willow and tried to produce a human shape.
And they hummed. Or sang. Or chattered. Some kind of low, joyous sound bubbled out of them, not any kind of speech that I could understand, but surely a form of communication. It leapt ahead of us on the road, a kind of anticipation, and buzzed behind us once we’d passed, no doubt in speculation. A human girl has come to visit us in Alora, they might have been saying. How strange she looks. And yet how familiar . . .
I pressed closer to Jaxon. He glanced down with a grin.
“Nothing quite like it, hey?” he said. “I’ve been to all eight provinces and traveled some distance across the ocean and never come across any place that filled me with the shivers the way Alora does.”
“Everybody’s staring at me,” I said in a low voice.
“It’s not often they’ve seen a human woman. All of the hunters who have stumbled across Alora have been men.”
“So I’m the only girl who’s ever been here?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Jaxon replied a little vaguely. I remembered the stories of human babies stolen by the aliora and raised here among their fey brethren. If the tales were true, might I encounter some of those kidnapped children? Would they even look human to me after years of captivity?
I wanted to take Jaxon’s hand again, but I didn’t. “My mother says they might invite me to stay with them,” I said. “Forever.”
His laugh boomed out. “No doubt they will. The aliora will be delighted with you.”
“But they won’t make me stay,” I added, trying to keep the anxiety out of my voice.
He glanced down again. “No aliora ever held a human against his or her will,” he said firmly. “Men and women who settle in Alora stay because they want to.”
“That’s all right, then,” I said, relieved.
He grinned once more. “But after a few days here, you might want to.”
“No,” I said. “I’ll be going home. As soon as it’s safe.”
We had been strolling through the unconventional dwellings of Alora for about thirty minutes when Jaxon finally pointed. “Rowena’s place,” he said.
It was more like a building than anything we had passed so far, but even so it was less like a house than a gazebo, albeit a very large one. It was round and many-storied, and some portions had walls of stone and some portions had walls of wood, and some portions had no walls at all. The bottom floor seemed to be one big atrium decorated with living greenery. In the very center, a simple fountain sent up a spray of water that fell back into a shallow pool. Unlike the great fountain in the courtyard at Castle Auburn, this one did not appear to run through any kind of pumping mechanism, but to feed directly from some underground spring.
A handful of aliora bustled across this open floor, exchanging news and murmuring to each other in that strange, melodic language. A winding stairway gathered strength on the bottom level, then twisted upward toward leafy lofts overhead, growing thinner and less reliable as it rose. I could not tell how many stories were piled above this one. It seemed likely that the roof, if there was one, would be woven of starlight and netting and a few plaited leaves. I hoped my bedroom was not too close to the top.
“This doesn’t seem like the kind of place people live,” I said to Jaxon in a low voice.
“Not people,” he said. “Aliora.”
We had barely stepped inside the house—if you could say you were inside such an open place—when Rowena herself came sweeping up to us. The few times I had seen her outside Alora, I had been struck by her beauty, for she had pearl-white skin and crow-black hair and such elegance of movement that her smallest gesture seemed choreographed. But here in Alora, she was astonishingly lovely, rich with radiance, bewitching.
“Zara!” she called, floating toward us with her hands outstretched. “It is so good to see you here.”
Without thinking about it, I started forward to fling myself into her arms. But Jaxon caught me hard and hauled me back. “You cannot touch her,” he said gruffly in my ear. “Not while your hands are covered with gold.”
“Oh!” I said. I knew that, of course. It was why I was wearing the bracelets, after all. But such was the welcome on Rowena’s face, such was the sudden desire to be enfolded in the embrace of an aliora, that I had forgotten. I stood awkwardly before the queen of the aliora, twisting my hands together.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “My mother made me promise I would not remove any of my jewelry.”
Rowena’s returning smile was full of warmth and forgiveness. “It was the correct promise for her to require,” she assured me. “I love Alora and cannot understand why anyone would choose to live anywhere else, but you have a home and responsibilities elsewhere. You must resist us with all your might.” She was laughing when she said this, as if joking, but I rather thought she was speaking the truth.
“I wish I could hug you,” I said truthfully.
Very carefully, making sure no part of her hand made contact with my necklace or my earrings, Rowena reached out and brushed her fingertips across my cheeks. It felt as though raindrops or perhaps honey-suckle nectar made a fresh track along my skin. “I feel as if I am hugging you,” she said in a soft voice. “I cannot express how deeply I want to welcome you to my home.”
“Let’s get her settled in,” Jaxon said practically. “Are you hungry, Zara? It’s been a long journey, I know.”
“Starving,” I said. “But then, I usually am.”
“I’ll see about lunch,” Rowena said. She laid one hand quickly on Jaxon’s arm, as if she couldn’t help herself; one quick possessive touch, and then she turned away. “You take her up to her room.”
I followed Jaxon up those haphazard stairs. They started out as stone, and gradually gave way to wood, and then eventually it seemed as if we were just stepping from one springy tree branch to another, still winding upward. I would guess I was on what corresponded to the third story before Jaxon led me down something you could hardly call a hallway—it was more like a rope bridge stretched above the ground, and it swayed when we put our weight on it. I was relieved when the room he showed me to actually seemed to deserve that designation. It had a floor of wooden planking, a couple of real walls, and something that looked enough like a bed to probably be a bed, though it was low to the floor and covered with moss instead of a blanket. Or something very similar to moss, at any rate.
“Oh, this is so charming!” I exclaimed.
“A little different from the castle,” he said. “You’ll find all the washing up is done down on the ground level in a little area built around a pool. But once you’re used to everything, it all makes sense. I hope you’ll be comfortable here. It’s strange, but it’s wonderful.”
I smiled at him. “That’s how it seems so far.”
“And the longer you’re here,” he added, “the less strange it will feel, and the more wonderful.”
Lunch at Rowena’s house was more like an outdoor picnic. We sat on logs and boulders in the open air while tree branches seemed to shake down alternating particles of sun and shadow. The food was wholly unfamiliar—slices of something that might have been bread, except it tasted like ground nuts; some kind of rough paste that was sweet as straight honey; chopped fruits that were foreign and utterly delicious. We ate off of plates made of wood and implements carved from bone. There was not a scrap of metal in the whole kingd
om, from what I could tell, except for the tiny steel hooks on my trousers and the gold lying flat against my flesh.
People came and went while we ate. I couldn’t tell if they were friends or servants; I couldn’t tell if they were visiting or performing chores. Most of them paused to stare at me and exchange observations with Rowena, but they spoke in that musical, clicking speech that I could not understand.
“But I just realized!” I exclaimed as our meal came to a close. “If I can’t speak their language and they can’t speak mine, I won’t be able to talk to anyone in Alora except the two of you!”
“There are fifty or so aliora who know human speech,” Rowena said. “You may meet some of them while you’re here.”
“Why did they bother to learn my language?” I asked.
I saw Rowena and Jaxon trade glances. He looked away, but she answered. “Because they lived for a time in the world of men.”
Now I understood. “Oh!” I said. “When they were—when they were slaves.”
“A long time ago,” Rowena said. “There have been no hunters tracking down aliora since well before you were born.”
I pulled myself up into my most majestic pose. “On behalf of all humans, I apologize for those shameless depredations.”
Rowena reached over and, careful not to touch my bracelets, brushed her fingertips across the back of my hand. Again, I felt as if dew or nectar had dropped upon my skin. “Your apology is accepted. Let us hope there will forever be harmony between our races.”
Jaxon was on his feet. “There’s so much more to show her,” he said. “Let me give her a tour of Alora.”
We spent the rest of the day exploring, although I by no means saw the whole of the kingdom. Truth to tell, I never got an exact sense of its size and limits, its population, its industries. All that really became clear was that this place where I had come to rest—the village of sorts that had grown up around Rowena’s house—was as close to a capital city as the kingdom claimed. I had the impression that Alora itself unrolled for miles through the forest, along tracks even more overgrown than the one we had followed from the border. I would not have been surprised to learn that the aliora who made their homes deep within the woods existed almost like wild animals, burrowing underground or digging into broad tree trunks, clothing themselves, if they dressed at all, in trousers made of bark and skirts made of braided grasses. Rowena and the aliora who lived near her had adopted some of the conventions and mannerisms of men—perhaps because these trappings appealed to them and perhaps because they had needed some measure of sophistication to understand how to combat the hunters who came calling. But most of the aliora, or so I surmised, were so shy and untamed that Rowena’s little village would be as alien to them as it was to me—though for different reasons.