Eternal Youth Excerpt

“Do you think the sun ever moves?” Asked Tam Lin.

What an incredibly stupid question from my incredibly stupid friend. Of course not. When has the sun ever moved? But Tam made me look up, just for a second. I had to make sure. High above, past the towering lilac flowers, a still sun reigned in an eternally blue sky. Around it swirled clouds in the shapes of ducks, and dogs, and animals found only in the fair lands. They chased each other in lazy circles barely moving at all, never changing their forms. Not a single one ever moved in front of the sun.

I quickly look back down at my book hoping Tam Lin didn’t notice. “Of course not. Where would it go if it did?”

Tam needed a moment to think about this. The silence would’ve been a good time to return to reading but instead I found myself peering down the page, watching my friend watch the clouds. Tam Lin is an oddity in birth as well as personality. Their pale blue skin indicates one of the Winter fey, but their canopy of untamed red curls suggests their connection to the Summer Court. Neither of those courts exist anymore and they never had. There is only the Eternal Spring.

“It could hide behind the trees of The Fallen Lands and sleep, it’s easier to sleep when it’s dark, you know.”

“Nothing needs darkness.” I mutter but Tam isn’t listening. They’re still gesturing up at the clouds.

“Then it could round the sky above the courts. That way, The Winterlands can have light when Summer Vineyard is dark and vice versa.”

“The sun belongs to the Eternal Spring. And we share it by putting it up in the sky so everyone else may see it.” I tap my proud green fingers against the book. “I think you should become a boy.”

“Why?” Tam Lin sits back on the hyacinth petal causing it to bend under their weight.

As always when I get distracted by reading, I find myself turning back to the page with an illustration of my mother in a silk dress. “Because I’m going to become a girl. Girls run The Court more than boys do, and that way I’ll get to wear lots of flowing and regal dresses.”

“But what if I want to wear dresses too?” Tam said, leaning forward on their elbows.

I catch their eyes. “Do you?”

“Of course not. You can’t run in them,” they say, adjusting their tunic so they could kick their legs like restless rivers. Below them, the entire flower shakes and the blades of grass reach upwards like a field of swords.

I close my book loudly and place it on my tansy cushion. “Then it’s settled. You’ll become a boy and I’ll become a girl and then when we grow up and get married we can become Queen and King of The Eternal Spring.”

Tam Lin turns to me. They look me dead in the eye and say nothing. My shoulders tense. The seeds scatter in their head planting whole fields of ideas behind those unreadable amber eyes. Without warning Tam Lin stands up. They stick out their arms forward and bounce the petal. Once, twice-”

“Stop it!” Too late. Tam jumps off the flower to the grass blades below.

I lurch forward onto my knees and peer over my tansy seat. Below me leaves sway in the wind. No sign of Tam. Just when I am about to turn around something pulls the stalk of my flower, causing it to dip and sliding me right off.

I fall right past the leaves, surrounded on all sides by flower stalks. Below me, the grass rises up in blades. I try to grab it. I snag only my book instead. Good enough. My wings unfurl, and I parachute back up.

It seems odd such dainty things as my gossamer wings should hold me in the air, and yet I can feel the air brush past through them, propelling me upwards towards where Tam is hiding. Tam Lin’s wings have blue fingers threading through them. They claw out of Tam’s back stretching between orange membranes like a bat’s hand.

I hit them. “You almost made me drop my book.”

“So you hit your poor fragile book against my thick head?” Tam tries to manage a pout but immediately breaks into a laugh. “Come on. I wanna show you something”

They lead me up and up, through the sea of flowers, and higher still until we’re level with the topmost towers of the Castle Verdant. And still, we go higher. My wings beat against the thin air. With every flap, there’s less to hold onto and more heat as the sun grows closer. No, that’s not right. The sun doesn’t move. We’re just getting closer and closer until it almost takes up the entire sky. Just when I think Tam’s going to lead us straight into its burning eye they say, “Ok, now turn around.”

I sigh with what little air I have left, trying to hide my excitement. Are we skydiving again? This high up? But when I turn my breath catches in my throat. Down below, the sea of flowers is so small I can’t make out the individual flowers. Instead a huge swath of purples and yellows surround Castle Verdant. The Castle nearly blends into the green fields if not for the deep red Amaranth climbing its towers. None of the amaranths bend in the wind, as is proper for the children of the Time Flower. A traitor wind blows loose petals away from Castle Verdant and towards the lands where the other courts once resided. To the south the mint green landscape turns Emerald among the purple Vineyards of Summer. To the North, rainbow candies punctuate the cotton whiteness of the Winter Wonderland. And far to the West, I can see amber trees peaking over the horizon.

“It’s beautiful,” I whisper.

“It is.” Tam Lin’s voice sounds hollow. The mischievous bounce of their words is gone, for only a moment, but it quickly bounces back. “Sometimes you have to see things from a new angle, though. For example, what if we both became Kings. Or Queens. We can both dance in the Queen’s Raiment.”

Of course, they brought me up here for this nonsense. “Who would lead?”

“Does it matter?

It does. Of course, it does. I just can’t remember why. I try to think of father’s lessons but my mind just goes back to images of Tam Lin and I together. No parents watching, or instructors pulling your wings when you flutter off beat. The music sways like it always does. I could be in Tam Lin’s arms. Or Tam in mine. Who would lead?

“I believe that would be me.”

T he voice comes from below. Four fenodyree guards carry a litter made from a gilded acorn. The top of the acorn is raised allowing its occupant to fly out once she gets close enough. Her crown emerges first, twisting beetle thorns woven through her rose pink hair. Her wings are so fine it seems that her long undulating dress hangs in the sky with a magic all its own. But the most striking feature is her eyes. Mine are only pink to match my hair, but Mother’s eyes blossom with all the light on the visible spectrum, and even a few that aren’t. Queen Titania is the living embodiment of The Summer Court. Graceful, youthful, kind and joyous. Except her joy is currently set in a line thin enough to cut the whiskers of a dandelion seed.

She looks back and forth between me and Tam as if expecting an immediate excuse or perhaps confession. When neither comes she speaks to me. “What are you doing at the edge of the realm?”

“I’m sorry Mother. We didn’t mean to. We’re just lost.” I bow and put on my best dutiful face. I’ll have to plead and perform my duties to the letter until at least the next ball before she forgets this.

Mother rises high above me again, not with her usual grace but with movements so staccato I have to bite my lip to keep from gasping. She has even more trouble flying than I did thanks to wearing that enormous dress in the upper atmosphere. But an interrogation-lecture was never complete without Mother’s feet in my face. “Lost you say? You got lost and somehow wound up in the upper air?”

“We’re chasing butterflies, your Highness,” Tam Lin lies. They’re good at lying, until they aren’t. “Right now, we’re appreciating the view. Is that a crime?”

“A crime?” Mother’s crown rises up like a hissing cat. “A crime is doing something that disrupts the peace of the Eternal Spring. Secret meetings in places where no Fae should fly certainly counts as that. But I’m more interested in what you are plotting?”

Tam’s impassive face melts into confusion, as does my own dutiful facade. “Mother, we aren’t planning anything.

“Liar! Puck! I heard you two plotting who would lead the Faerie.”

Why was it so hard to breathe in this thin air? “We were talking about dancing! Who would lead a dance once we grow up and choose our genders?”

Mother’s crown ceases its bristling, but stays ready to pounce. The colors in her kaleidoscope eyes rotate slowly. Below one of her litter bearers coughs. “You are not plotting to take my kingdom?”

“No of course not! We’re talking about when we would grow up and...um...inherit your kingdom. Not until we are allowed to become adults though.” I add quickly.

Mother’s wings flutter once, twice, and a third time. Her crown settles and her whisker thin mouth expands into her usual graceful smile, filled with teeth that shine like morning dew.

“Why of course dearie. Now, why don’t you fly down. There’s important news waiting for us in the throne room.”

Tam Lin shoots straight down at the first chance they get. Perhaps it’s only an accident they knock one of the litter bearers off balance. I linger though, staring into Mother’s impassive kaleidoscope eyes and watching her normally unwavering smile tremble just a bit.

“Mother, what’s the news?”

There’s something there, I have not seen before. I think I may have seen it on her servants, or in the mirror after a late excursion. But I have been Queen Titania’s teenage child, and heir to the Eternal Spring for as long as there has been an Eternal Spring, and I had never seen a look of fear upon my mother’s face. Her smile fades and with the practiced coldness of Onna Lyth, she reaches out and touches my cheek with her sinewy fingers. “Niamh, my sweetness, my eternal child, there is dire news from The Fallen Lands. There has been a death.”

We are high up. The air is thin, and the motionless sun presses down on me. Death. I’ve heard the word before I think. But that was in another time, before eternity started. I want to ask Mother what it means, but more so than that I don’t want to look like a fool in front of the Queen of all seasons. So I shut my mouth and follow her into the acorn litter.