Tamlane Prisoner of the queen of the fairies
Natalie Yacobson
Translator Natalie Lilienthal
© Natalie Yacobson, 2022
© Natalie Lilienthal, translation, 2022
Created with Ridero smart publishing system
The knight of dreams
White and red roses braided the frame of the mirror. The spiky stems were as if they were alive. They crawled upward like snakes. Janet thought she was dreaming. She was standing in her bedroom in her fathers castle in front of a huge mirror. The room was quiet and dark. And there was a battle going on inside the mirror. There was the scraping of metal against metal as the swords of the fighting men crossed. Horses roared beneath their riders and clubs and shields gleamed. Some knights wielded conventional weapons, while others deployed magic. Men fought against supernatural beings.
So this was a dream after all! Janet watched the battle in the mirror and tried to determine whom the crests belonged to? None of the families she knew had coats of arms with salamanders and roses. Some of the banners belonged to humans, some to supernatural creatures. The banners of men, meanwhile, had been trampled. Knights of flesh and blood were killed by warriors of fire. Flames invaded the battle as if spewed from a dragons mouth. Standing close to the mirror, Janet felt its heat. Is it possible to feel heat in a dream? What if this wasnt a dream after all? The girl reached out to the mirror, hoping she wouldnt run into the glass barrier. Then it would turn out that the ornate frame was just a window to another world.
Before Janet could touch the mirror, the rose thorns dug into her hand until it bled. The blood on her fingers was real, and the pain of the scratches was real, too. So this was no dream!
One knight suddenly stood close to the mirror on the other side. He was looking directly at Janet. The girl flinched. He had such eyes! Like green pools in which you were about to drown. The face was covered by a visor, and the helmet itself was made in the shape of a dragons horned head. Surely this knight was not human. But why was he fighting on the side of men?
Who are you?» she tried to ask the question out loud, but her voice was drowned out by the noise from across the mirror. The fire was devouring the bodies of the vanquished. And the knight, as if he had emerged from that fire, held out his hand to Janet. His gauntlet almost touched her, but the roses that braided the mirror clenched and hissed. They wouldnt let him in. Janets blood was on their thorns. And behind the mirror there was already a wall of fire.
«You want to see me in reality, not in a dream?» The knights voice was muffled. It sounded from beneath his visor, and it seemed as if the dragon depicted on his helmet was speaking to her, not he himself.
Nevertheless, Janet looked into his eyes and knew that she wanted to see him always.
«Yes!» she answered. Her voice, as before, was drowned in the noise of the fire, but the knight heard her.
«Then set me free!» His hand, encased in a heavy gauntlet, caught her arm and squeezed it until it ached. Janet even cried out. How strong he was! Why couldnt he free himself if he was so strong? He reeked of power and fire. He managed to tear the stems of the roses, step over the frame of the mirror, and embrace Janet. His embrace lasted even less than a moment. The girl realized she was not in the arms of a man, but of a pillar of fire. Her skin was burning. Now she was going to burn!
And that was the end of the dream. If only it had been a dream. Janet awoke at dawn. The larks were singing outside her fathers castle window. And the girls arms were blooming with burns and pricks from rose thorns.
So was it a dream after all, or not a dream?
Flaming legends
The girls played ball in the meadow. It had recently become a local pastime, except for tournaments. Some pedlar brought balls here and showed them how to play. Several years had passed since then, and the game had taken root here as if it had never been played before.
Janet remembered that boy. He was as red as autumn, with pointed tips of his ears sticking out from under his green beret. He carried a heavy box of merchandise behind him, sometimes showed tricks, and smiled sweetly at everyone, but he only winked at Janet.
«They say elves walk in a circle in those hills,» Nyssa tugged at Janets sleeve and pointed farther away, to where the sun was setting. «They walk in those hills over there! The wanderers saw them, and then they died. Elves are rumored to be dangerous to mingle with. They will charm you and then destroy you.»
Janet watched the flaming sunset, and it seemed to her that the silhouettes of flame dancers loomed on the hill, making a strange round dance with abrupt unnatural movements.
The girl shook her long braids. To her, it just seems. The flame dancers in the hills are nothing more than a play of light and shadow. The sunset is the same shade as these figures its easy to see where anything comes from.
«People who fall under the spell of the elves,» Nyssa went on, «develop green skin, a poor appetite, insomnia, and nightmares. They even suspect that they see evil spirits everywhere. They do not live long. They wither and die quickly, as if someone had drained them of all their strength.»
«Has that ever happened to anyone you know?» Janet raised an eyebrow mockingly, glancing sideways at her talkative friend.
«Of course not, God forbid,» Nyssa said with a prayer that she didnt think it would happen to anyone we knew. After all, the creatures of the forest and the hills can drink all the blood out of us
«You speak of it so well, as if you had seen it with your own eyes.»
«I only heard with my own ears,» Nyssa protested without mocking. «And you, if you werent so proud and talked to the boys from the next town, youd have heard things that would give you the creeps.»
«I dont believe it!» Janet said dryly, not really wanting to admit that her father was trying to keep her out of the castle and limiting her communication with anyone he considered unworthy of his daughters company. Nyssa, for instance, if she said anything of the sort in the presence of the old earl, she would immediately be chased out of the castle. And shell never be Janets maid of honor again. Maid of Honor! Normally, only queens have maid of honor. But the local feudal lord was like a king to the surrounding peasantry, so it didnt seem strange to anyone that his daughter had maids of honor. In fact, her father wanted to surround her with a lot of boisterous girlfriends so that she wouldnt go anywhere, as her mother had once done. Chatty girls would be sure to denounce her if any stranger started seducing her and asking her to go away with him. Nyssa would call such a daredevil an elf from the woods. And more reasonable people called them either kidnappers of married ladies or desperate hunters for a bride with a dowry.
Janet wanted to believe that her mother had been kidnapped by some king and held by force in his court. It was easier to think that way than that her corpse, which had long ago been stripped of all its jewels, was resting in some wooded hollow.
Officially, Janets mother was considered dead, not a runaway. But that didnt make her father feel any better. He grew older by the day. At forty-something, he already resembled an ancient old man, his hands ringed with signet rings. He was constantly afraid that something might happen to Janet. But the girl was in her eighteenth year, and nothing untoward had happened to her.
«Seventeen years of careless living is no guarantee that in your eighteenth year you wont be tested?»
Who said that? The voice was thin and hoarse, like the cawing of a crow. Janet noticed that the girls were no longer playing ball, because the ball rolled right back to her feet. It looked as if a trail of blood stretched across the grass, but it was just a trail of sunset glow.
«At your eighteenth birthday you can even die!»
This time Janet looked up to the branches of the tree from which the voice had come. There sat a bird, all black. Only a few feathers in its tail and crest were as colorful as a rainbow.
What kind of bird was it? It was neither a crow, nor a peacock, though its tail was very long and lush. Its forehead burned with something that looked like a third eye or a jewel! Janet didnt get a chance to look at it, as she was required to pick up the ball and continue the game. She had to defer to her friends. The girl stubbornly refused to call them maids of honor. She was not, after all, a queen. Even if illiterate peasants did not know the rules of the royal court, but she had read a lot and learned everything.
«Dont get your train caught on the edge of the magic realm!» a bird cawed angrily as Janets train got stuck in the roots of a stump that didnt seem to be there a second ago. The girl barely managed to free the brocade cloth, but a flap was left on the roots. The bird cawed defiantly, and either the eye or the stone in its forehead glowed red.
It was all sunset games! Janet raised her ball, and almost jerked her hands away. It seemed to her that from the ball the face of the pedlar who had once brought the game to the castle was smiling at her amiably. The illusion lasted only a moment.
Janet went to her girlfriends, but the sensation of holding someone elses head in her hands only intensified. Nyssa made her play with everyone. Janet was quickly out of breath and tired. What kind of game is it to flip the ball from hand to hand? But the girls laughed merrily, catching it. They enjoyed the game as much as boys enjoy spears and swords.
Janet remembered the mirrored shields of the imps that she had seen in her dream fighting earthly knights. What a dream that had been! She was still terrified to remember. She must have dreamed it all because of Nyssas chatter, and also because of the stories of two travelers who had spent the night in the castle not so long ago. Over dinner, they told many tales of the strange creatures of the forest they had encountered along the way. They could, after all, make up stories to amuse their guests and thus work off their overnight stay. But how dark her father became when he listened to their stories! It was as if he knew something he had never spoken of.
Elves in the woods! Roundabouts in the hills! Janet looked away, to where the edge of the forest was black on the horizon. It was forbidden for anyone who lived in the castle to go there. Allegedly, there were a lot of wild animals there. But then why didnt people go there to hunt anymore? Janet remembered that in her childhood, when her mother was still alive, they often went hunting in the woods and came back with game.
Only once, instead of the usual carcasses of fallow- deer and deer, the old knight brought an unusual creature to the house. It spoke even after it had been gutted. It complimented her mother and even sang. Not long after that, her mother disappeared. All Janet was left with was a locket of her portrait, which she wore around her neck. That was all!
It was sad that other girls of her age had living and caring mothers and she no longer did. Her father, too, seemed only half alive. He had become moody and taciturn and withdrawn ever since his wife had disappeared.
«If I could only find their kingdom, I would blow them all away!» said he to someone on the night of his mothers disappearance. Janet got out of bed then and eavesdropped under the opened door. Her father had a visitor who had a bad reputation in the nearest town. He was even nicknamed the foul trapper or inquisitor, but he returned all the gold he had paid to his father because he could not help him. He was stern, but honest. Because he returned from the woods without the countess, the purse of coins was also returned. The gold jingled on the table. A circle of tiny figures danced in the fireplace.
«Come to us!» They called to Janet. She stared only at them, hardly listening to what her father was saying to the trapper. Only one phrase stuck in her memory.
«I would destroy them all, if only I could find their kingdom among the forests. But no one can find them!» Some scrap of paper in a womans delicate handwriting fell from his fingers. The earl made a fist of his strong arm, which was gleaming with precious rings like armor. Since then, his hand had grown flabby and wrinkled like a dead mans. The only thing that reminded him of his former strength were his rings. They bore the insignia and seal of his noble house. Her father never took them off. It was as if those rings were the only talisman against those voices that supposedly called to him from his window at night.
The grass lapped beneath Janets train. A black bird was flying behind her now in the height of the sunset sky. The other girls had spotted it, too.
«It was following us like a pesky cavalier,» one of the girls joked, and everyone else laughed in unison. Janet didnt laugh.
«It followed me, not you,» the earls daughter wanted to say, but said nothing. Why spoil the mood for those who were having so much fun. She herself suddenly felt cold and was frightened. And its May, after all. Now was not the time to be shivering from the frost.
The cold spread from her fingertips to her whole body. Janet walked through the blooming meadow and froze. And a bird cawed overhead, as if laughing.
«Catch!» The ball would have hit her chest if she hadnt put her arms forward. Janet caught it deftly, and again she thought the ball was the head with the smiling face of a redheaded boy she hadnt seen in years.
The girls looked at her in amazement.
«Why dont you throw the ball?» Nyssa asked.
It seemed strange to them. Janet had been looking at the patterns on the ball for a minute. The girls only noticed the golden patterns. She, on the other hand, saw a smirk and boyish features in them.
Twenty incomprehensible pairs of eyes were fixed on her, and Janet didnt know what to say.
«Arent you sick?» Nyssa moved cautiously toward her to feel her forehead, but suddenly everyone was distracted by a sudden apparition. A scrawny young man with a box behind his back was striding down the path, flaming in the sunset rays.
«Quentin!» the girls exclaimed cheerfully, and rushed toward him. It seemed as if they were about to kiss him, but they only began pushing to look at his luggage.
«How do they know him?» Janet wondered.
«Hes a successful trader in town. You dont go there,» Nyssa scolded her, «otherwise youd meet a lot of interesting young men.»
Janet caught sight of the pedlar and was taken aback. This was the same redheaded boy who used to sell ribbons and fabrics. Hed grown surprisingly fit, but the pointy tips of his ears still stuck out ugly from under his red hat. Apparently he had already sold his green velvet beret to someone. So his name was Quentin! She couldnt remember his name, though. But she well remembered his impertinent, mocking look.
When the other girls had sorted out the goods they needed, the guy beckoned Janet to him. She approached only to look at him, not to shop. She had enough of the dressy belts, signet rings, and ribbons in the castle. She didnt need any more. And you cant carry that around in a lifetime, even if that lifetime stretched for centuries.