Feversong (Fever #9)(86)
“Our queen! Our queen! Isn’t she lovely? Oooh, she’s so beautiful!” Trills of excitement rippled through them.
“What are you?” I asked the crowd of tiny beings. “I mean, what caste and why have I never seen you before?”
A slender gray-spotted fairy sloshed forward through a puddle and bowed low. “O Austere and Beneficent Queen, the Spyrssidhe have long been forbidden at court.”
“Why?”
“We were deemed unacceptable and banished, exalted liege,” she said.
“She speaks to us! She speaks to us!” rippled through the crowded, rainy street. “She may hear our petition!”
“By the prior queen?” I asked.
She nodded sadly. “Cast out into the world of Man, to make our homes in trees and streams, among rocks and flowers and the gardens of Man. We felt the rising of a new and different queen and came to petition you, gracious and wise Queen, in hopes you would hear our plea and reconsider our fate.”
All this “queen” stuff was a bit much but I knew better than to downplay my status. I’d learned my lesson the day I told the Hunter I wasn’t the king. He’d said I couldn’t fly anymore if I wasn’t. Until I got a better handle on things, I’d do my best to incur and keep the respect and cooperation of the Fae. “Why were you banished?”
A male fairy with copper and tan spots pushed through, knelt in a puddle before me, put one hand to his breast and bowed deeply. “O Munificent Queen, unlike the others of our race, our hearts failed to ice.”
I cocked my head, startled. Was he telling me they felt emotion? I was just about to ask when he continued, “Nor did our loins. From jealousy and spite they drove us out, stupendous, all-powerful Queen. She who rules no more decreed we were not Fae enough for Faery once we began siring young on this world.”
I gasped. “You can have children?” I’d thought it impossible for Fae to reproduce!
“Few, but yes, O Fair and Radiant Liege. It didn’t begin happening until we came to this world. The other castes were patient for a time, waiting to see if the same would occur for them. When it did not, they turned the queen’s icy heart against us. She stripped us of our place in Faery.”
He gestured to someone behind him and a young, light purple and green fairy, the perfect coloring to hide in a hydrangea bush, came forward holding a tiny bundle in her arms, cradling it beneath a shiny leaf to keep it dry. She peeled back the misted leaf to show me a naked, translucent, infant fairy the size of a fingernail.
“Oh!” I exclaimed, smiling. It was adorable. And so tiny! “She’s lovely.”
Blushing, the fairy exclaimed, “I am honored by your kindness, great Queen! Our young are void of color at birth and grow slowly into their patterns, painted by whatever element of Nature they favor. Some are drawn to waterfalls.” She waved a hand at a young female fairy, marked with vertical stripes of white and pale gray. “Others to rocks or forests or tall grassy meadows or flowers. Some part of Nature calls to each of us and she patterns us accordingly.” She blushed again. “I live among the gorse and heather, great Queen. If I am blessed, so will my child be.”
“Why would you wish to return to court? It sounds as if you like this world.”
The male fairy said, “My Queen, we but seek the freedom to come and go as we wish, as do the others of our kind. We desire our seat upon the council back. We are Fae. We have always been Fae. They had no right to cast us out. Faery is our home, too, and we would have a say in the matters of our race.”
As I stared out at the thousands of diminutive Fae gathered in the rainy street, it finally, fully sunk in.
I was the Faery queen. This wasn’t a trial run or a temporary situation.
They’d felt my power and sought me out, tracked me here. No doubt other Seelie would, too. And each would bring their problems and grievances and demands. The higher castes (thinking Dree’lia here) would no doubt come armed with hostility, resentment, and murder in their frosted hearts. I was supposed to rule this race. Hear and settle their disputes, enter into their politics.
It was too much to process. Part of me wanted to whirl back into the bookstore, slam the door, and reject it all. It was one thing to have been bequeathed the potential to save our world, entirely another to actually become the queen of a race of beings I was beginning to realize I knew nothing about. A race of beings that, a year ago, I’d actively hunted and killed. I’d wanted nothing more than to eradicate the Fae race from our planet. Was that the answer? Save our world, find them a new one and turn my power over to another, Fae-born?
At the moment, whether I liked it or not, I was their queen, and until I figured out what to do about it I would behave accordingly. These tiny beings were looking to me for justice, decisions, leadership. They could have children. They felt. My entire apprehension of the Fae race was being turned on its ear.
They were elementals, drawn to Nature. “Do you sense the disturbance in the fabric of this world?”
Thousands of heads nodded instantly.
“Is there anything you can do to help heal it?”
Thousands of heads shook no.
“We are small Fae, and do small things, beauteous Queen,” the heather and gorse fairy said. “Enriching the soil, cleansing the water, making flowers bloom more brightly. Large matters such as the sickness that eats away at this world are beyond us.”