Awaken: An Enchanted Story Read online

  Myrina shivered to hear him say so, so close on the heels of her own similar musings, but forced a brief laugh. “Surely you don’t believe in such things, Master Gottreb?”

  The old man shrugged. “I won’t say I do, and I won’t say I don’t. Many a strange tale I’ve heard in the past—some beyond explaining.”

  “Like what?”

  The old man narrowed his eyes as though thinking deeply. “Like the story of the red stag my father swore led him on a chase through the woods and then vanished in the blink of an eye. Or that of the prince who disappeared without a trace, leaving only his bow behind.” Gottreb nodded, as though seeing the scepticism on her face. “There is even a place in the woods I once found, where although it were winter, the grass was green and littered with flowers. The horse I was on refused to go into it and reared before galloping away. ’Twas a beautiful glade, ringed with trees, and I was of a mind to go back, for it was so pretty. But never could I find it again, although I know these woods like the back of my hand and spent many a day searching.”

  Myrina wanted to ask him more about the glade, but his words robbed her of speech. Why was the thought of never being able to find that place again so heartbreaking, when she had run from it as though chased by the devil himself?

  Gottreb gestured to a battered chest in the corner of the room. “Look in there for my pouch and take a shilling for the goodwife.” His face was suddenly sly, and his rheumy eyes blinked rapidly. “And there might be a penny in there for you, if you would do an old man a little favour.”

  Feigning ignorance, Myrina went to the chest and opened it. Although the pouch lay right on top, she took some time getting it out, knowing her face was already pink with embarrassment. “I’m afraid I can’t stop tonight to do any more for you, Master Gottreb. Perhaps another time.”

  The old man sighed, but didn’t pursue the matter. “If you come another time, I will tell you the story of the missing prince.” The old man’s voice was eager, the words rushing one upon the other. “I’m so lonely here, and the company will do me good.”

  With her back still to him, Myrina took out the shilling for the goodwife and returned the pouch to the trunk. “I’ll try,” she said, and meant it, for then she could ask him about the glade as well. Bidding the old man goodnight, she left him and stepped out into the twilight.

  All around her the night seemed to hum and sing. A full harvest moon was rising, blood red, behind the trees. Suddenly frightened for no reason other than the lingering yearning twisting in her belly, Myrina began to run. She would be safe at home with her mother, out of the woods.

  Yet no matter how fast she ran, the sensation of a dangerous, uncontrollable something chasing her would not subside, but followed, snapping at her heels, the entire way home.

  When Myrina pushed open the door to their cottage, her mother was dozing by the fire, head slumped to her chest, the flickering light and shadow emphasising her frailty. For a moment Myrina simply stood, letting her gaze take in every line of the beloved face, the once-strong hands now almost bird-like in their delicacy, the small lump her body made beneath the quilt.

  The click of the latch as the door swung shut woke the sleeping patient, who looked up to smile at her daughter.

  “Ah, you’re home,” whispered her mother, in a soft breathless voice. “You’re later than I expected.”

  Myrina turned away to hang up her cloak on a peg by the door and to hide the sudden flame of her cheeks. “Goodwife Harbottle asked me to deliver the woodsman’s provisions, and it took longer than I thought.”

  “Hmm,” was the sleepy reply. “I’m glad you stopped for a while with Gottreb. He must be lonely by himself so deep in the woods.”

  Wanting to change the subject, Myrina asked, “Did you have some of the soup I left you?”

  “Oh, yes. And I’ve already taken my nightly draught.”

  Myrina glanced into the pot hanging over the fire and knew if her mother had eaten any, it was only a mouthful. But although words of remonstration rose to her lips, she swallowed them back down and simply said, “That is good, Mama,” before helping her mother to ready herself for bed.

  The moon had risen fully by the time Myrina climbed the ladder leading to her little attic room and was so bright she blew out her lamp and undressed by the silvery light. Clad only in her shift, she stood at the window, trying to sort through the disparate emotions—fear, disbelief, desire, shame—all churning together in her heart.

  Out there, somewhere, the glade would be bathed in moonlight. The magical circle of trees stood guard. The spirit or faery who spoke in that deep, thrilling voice was there, waiting for her. How she knew that, Myrina could not say, but it was a conviction that grew and widened until the pull of his voice, his passion, was almost too strong to resist.

  “No good will come of this, Myrina Traihune. Best to forget—go on as though it never happened.”

  The whispered words held no weight and floated away like smoke, insubstantial and unimportant in comparison to the fire raging inside.

  Prince Ryllio had learned not to count the days or measure the nights, even when he was aware of them. Time had become meaningless and, for long, blessed ages, he sank into a dream state, as though the stone encasing his body had travelled to his brain, giving it infinite slowness. Between those periods he was awoken by the Fey, became aware of and treasured each contact with the living, be it animal or bird, faery or human, although the latter were rare indeed.

  Visits from the Fey were once more frequent, but had slowly dwindled. The king and queen had sometimes returned, rousing him from his stupor to watch their midnight parties in the glade, where they and their court caroused by torchlight. Sometimes, coming alone, they made love as on the first day when they caught him watching. Energetic and adventurous lovers, their couplings left him almost weeping with desire. Better, he thought at those times, for them to have killed him outright rather than torture him in such a cruel way. His body was stone, but his emotions, his needs, remained intact, becoming painful as he watched them make love and was touched and aroused by the tenderness between them.

  Golden-haired Kestor also sometimes came to see him, allowing Ryllio a few weeks or months of consciousness, but his visits, like those of the king and queen, came with less and less frequency. The Fey, Kestor once explained, were slowly retreating beyond the veil. Some would always remain in the human world, and there were portals between the two planes if you knew where to find them, but they were becoming fewer. It was only as Ryllio considered the oak on the other side of the glade had gone from sapling to towering behemoth in the time since he last saw a faery that he realised they were probably gone from this part of the human world forever.

  “Good riddance,” he thought, but in his heart he knew it to be a sad thing, irrespective of the trouble they had visited on him. The thought of their magic being lost to this world was an unhappy circumstance indeed. And their company, tantalizing and frustrating as it was, was some relief from the loneliness which otherwise was complete. Growing to appreciate the birds that nested in his thicket, the foxes that sometimes denned nearby, was not the same as hearing voices, seeing others like his former self, be they human or Fey.

  Living this mostly timeless existence had been the norm, until today.

  Now, desperation forced the counting not of minutes but of seconds since the black-haired nymph had left the glade.

  She had entered as though in a dream—a little smile tipping the edges of her full pink lips, the motion of her hands languid and graceful as she doffed her cloak. Beneath a small white cap edged with lace lay coils of midnight-dark hair, small tendrils escaping in ringlets to play around her face. Heavy-lidded eyes of sparkling blue seemed to look right at him, and a blush of rosy colour stained from throat to softly rounded cheeks.

  Ryllio had felt her presence, her beauty, like the pull of a rope anchored to his soul. As she stopped before where he knelt and reached to unbutton her jacket, the pounding
echo of his heart shook his stony prison and rushed in his ears.

  The need to touch her, learn who she was, was so overwhelming he forgot the spell holding him in place—tried to reach for her although it was impossible. Straining, he imagined touching her face, the sensation of her peachy skin beneath his fingers. When she arched her face skyward, raising her hands to her cheeks, her neck, Ryllio knew she could hear his thoughts, his wishes, although he knew not how.

  Oh, the joy of it! The desire! Watching the innocent exploration, her sweet face tight and flushed with need and knowing she could sense all he desired made Ryllio feel alive, truly human for the first time since his punishment began.

  Her small breasts were sensitive. It was obvious from the way simply touching them excited her, took her close to the apex of passion. His yearning to enhance her pleasure led him further and further until he imagined her naked beneath him, thighs open, revealing her most secret place to his avid gaze. She shuddered, her little hand creeping beneath her skirts, and he pictured himself lifting her hips, covering her delicious wet flesh with his mouth.

  The sound of her release was sweet torture—the sight of her falling back, writhing among the flowers, crying out again and again, brought him to a pitch of need never felt before. As a man he had loved women, taking delight in their charms. As a lump of stone he had seen beautiful Fey, scantily or even sky-clad, watched the royal couplings and known the rush of arousal. But never had he wanted, craved, another as he did this woman.

  Then she ran away, and Ryllio was left to grieve as he had not sorrowed since the days after Mab transformed his body into rock. Again and again he called to her, knowing she could not hear, or perhaps was too frightened to heed, but unable to stop. Each degree of the rising moon was marked, noted, added to the tally of heartbreak when she did not return. And so would it be with the sun the next day, and the next, he knew, and again with the moon or stars each lonely night for eternity.

  He did not even know her name, knew not whose loss he mourned—knew only the prison he was in had never felt as all-encompassing as it did this night. And as the moon rose to tint the hollow silver, and the night breezes rustled through the leaves, over and over he whispered:

  “I mean you no harm, beautiful one. Please, come back to me.”

  And suddenly, as though in answer to his entreating words, she was there—and his heart almost burst with happiness.

  Chapter Four

  Exhausted as she had been, Myrina could not sleep. Each time she dozed, the sound of his voice roused her back to consciousness. Nothing stopped it—not the pillow over her head, a recitation of all the verses she knew, thoughts of her mother—nothing. When tossing and turning and a co-mingling of fear and desire rising within forced her from bed, she went to stand at her window. Lifting her flushed cheeks to the night breeze, inhaling the scent of wild sage and pine drifting through the air, she realised the voice had become even stronger, the entreaty much harder to resist.

  He called her beautiful, said he meant no harm. The loneliness and longing inherent in every word tugged at her heart and filled her with yearning.

  Before she could even think on it, she was downstairs, putting on her cloak and shoes. With one last look to ensure her mother slept, she slipped out the door and ran.

  Gottreb said he had searched the woods for the glade, but never found it again. Myrina, who knew only the area around her own house and the path to the village, found herself drawn in an almost straight line back to the hollow. Following his voice, the inexorable pull of her fantasy, was both exhilarating and terrifying. The moonshine turned everything to a study in silver and black, deepening the shadows while making even the smallest stone stand out.

  On and on she ran, feeling him grow stronger, becoming breathless as mystic desire gave wings to her feet. Enchanted, she thought. I have been ensorcelled. But the knowledge no longer had the ability to frighten. Too deep was she in the dream, in the magic. Fear and regret may have their day, but not now. The night belonged to her unknown, untouched, lover.

  Suddenly she was there and felt his joy. And something deeper, stronger even than the passion reaching out to caress her in waves. Heart pounding, she stopped at the edge of the clearing, feeling the world fall away with the ease of a cloak discarded. It would be there when she returned—all the sorrow and worry waiting—but here was a barrier it could not cross. In her secret trysting place, it had no power.

  “Tell me your name, beautiful one. Tell me what to cry aloud in my passion.”

  The words twisted through her, leaving sparks and plumes of heat in their wake.

  “Myrina,” she whispered, moving away from the trees, toward the thicket on the other side of the glade. It seemed lighter, less tangled than it had earlier in the day, the stone in the middle of it more exposed.

  “Myrina. A name worthy of such loveliness.”

  The sound of those deep, passionate tones rolled into her blood, set her very bones singing. Curiosity and the ever-present desire drew her closer to his hiding place.

  “Tell me yours.”

  “Ryllio.”

  “Ryllio,” she repeated, tasting it on her tongue, with her heart, and finding it perfect. Hearing him murmur in approval, she said it again, but slower, letting her voice convey all the secrets she did not yet have the courage to confess. “Ryllio.”

  He sighed, a heartfelt sound. “I never thought to hear my name spoken again, or knew the sound of it would make me so happy.”

  Inexplicably, Myrina felt tears sting her eyes. “Where are you, Ryllio? Why can’t I see you? Are you but a spirit?”

  “Worse.” His sorrow was like a living thing, moving in her mind. “Come closer and see.”

  At the edge of the thicket, she stopped and in the moonlight could see what she had thought a rock was in actuality a statue. A beautiful marble representation of a man, kneeling, the lower part of his body hidden in the brambles, with the face she had seen in her fantasy earlier that day.

  “How can this be?” she cried, reaching out instinctively, leaning into the thicket, trying to touch the harshly handsome lines of his face.

  “Be careful, there are thorns.”

  Unable to span the distance between them, Myrina withdrew her hand, sorrow clogging her throat. In her mind he was alive, a creature of flesh and blood. To see him thus, cold and inert, was enough to break her heart.

  “How did you come to this pass?”

  For a long moment, Ryllio was silent, and Myrina thought he did not intend to answer. When he did, regret weighed heavy in his tone.

  “I came upon the king and queen of the Fey while they indulged in love-play. I knew I should not watch, should leave them to their privacy, but I did not. Instead I stayed and spied upon them in their most intimate moments, and in their anger and disgust they condemned me to this fate.”

  “Oh, how cruel!” cried Myrina, aghast at so horrible a punishment for the crime committed.

  But Ryllio’s voice sounded only resigned. “Cruel, perhaps, but to them also just.”

  Myrina studied the marble face, seeing in it a hint of arrogance, a touch of stubbornness in the firm lines of jaw and mouth. “It was not right, what you did, but I cannot agree the punishment was just.”

  “It is done,” was his only reply.

  Pulling her cloak into place beneath her, Myrina sank onto the grass, tucking her legs under, not taking her gaze from his face. “How long have you been here?”

  His sigh echoed through her mind like the cry of a mourning dove. “A very long time—from the days when Paltheius ruled.”

  Try as she might, Myrina could not remember an emperor by that name, for history was never a favourite subject of hers at school, and this she confessed to Ryllio.

  “No matter,” he replied, “for it is all in the past. I am interested only in the now, here, with you. What benevolent trick of fate brought you to me?”

  Heat rushed through Myrina’s body at the question, and she knew, even
in moonlight, her blushes would be noticeable. Squirming slightly, she looked down at her hands where they lay on her lap and considered how to answer. Ryllio, she thought, had been honest with her, and she wanted to be the same with him, so in a low, halting voice she relayed her conversation with Elawen, and her friend’s advice. But she did not confess her thoughts on being ensorcelled and led to his grove for fear of hurting his feelings. Perhaps she had been enchanted at first, she reasoned, but the return to him now was her own doing.

  For a long time Ryllio said nothing, and Myrina began to wonder if he thought less of her, but his next words were reassuring.

  “I can’t help thinking your friend was only partly right.”

  “In what way?” Myrina asked in surprise.

  “There are some things you can learn on your own, but others only a lover can teach.”

  “What kinds of things?”

  Ryllio’s voice grew low, caressing. “The touch of your own hands is unlike the touch of another. What you do to yourself cannot feel the same or give the same sensations as when a lover gives you pleasure.”

  Myrina shivered, her skin prickling to life, body growing warm and liquid inside. Words failed her, for she remembered the imagined ecstasy of his mouth on her quim, wondered if it could have been even better in reality.

  “And,” he continued in the same low, seductive tone, “each lover is different, is inspired to do different things, or the same loving actions in different ways. It is only in the moment you can know whether these new sensations are pleasurable or not. But Elawen also was right. There can be no harm in learning your body’s desires for yourself.”

  Flushed with arousal, yet also embarrassed, Myrina thought it best to leave, but could not bring herself to go. It was not just the desire holding her in place, but a bone-deep reluctance to abandon Ryllio now that she knew of his lonely existence. There could be no harm in staying for a while, in being with him during this moonlit night, in asking him some of the questions burning in her mind.