The Faeries' Harp

25: Duke Aonghus

Rhys wakes up to sunlight streaming through a leafy ceiling and strong floral aromas all around him. Where am I? This isn’t my bedroom, Rhys wonders as he sits up and stretches. His arms bump his wings as he takes in the flower petal bed he’s been sleeping on, and suddenly he remembers everything. His gaze falls on the periwinkle scar on his palm, and instinctively he clenches his fist.

“I never got a chance to thank her properly,” he mumbles to himself, his mind filled with Saoirse’s ocean eyes and waves of golden hair. So much happened so quickly in the Throne Room of the Faerie Queen, and then the Duke and Duchess of Wisteria had so many questions for him. He fears he disappointed them with his account of the human realm, but he never really had a chance to leave the village where he grew up, and so his experiences are fairly limited.

Maybe they would have preferred to take Saoirse, instead of me. He remembers how her spine stiffened and her face hardened when the Duke and Duchess of Chrysanthemum would not accept her as their daughter, how her fingers curled in Bergljot’s mane as the unicorn came to her side to give her the comfort he would have liked to offer. No one deserves to be treated like that, least of all her, after she went to all that trouble to save my life, to provide for Ma….

“Oh, good, you’re awake!” Duchess Muirgel twitters, having come to the arch of hanging vines that creates a sort of doorway between the room she and Duke Aonghus have given to him and the rest of their dwelling. “Come eat with us, and then your father will take you out to the gardens to see what you can do with magic.”

Rhys learned very quickly, in his evening spent with the Duke and Duchess of Wisteria, that there is no arguing with Duchess Muirgel once her mind is made up about something. Most irritating to him is when she calls him Faolan, which is evidently what they had named him before he was taken from them. His attempts to explain that he has been called Rhys nearly his entire life and would very much prefer for Rhys to be his name have fallen largely on deaf ears, at least with Duchess Muirgel.

More agreeable, in his opinion, is the food. He has no idea what any of it is, but all of it is beautiful to behold, delightful to smell, and heavenly to taste. He wants to ask what it is that they’re eating, but he cannot get a word in edgewise. Duchess Muirgel prattles on, for the entire meal, telling him their family history in excruciatingly minute detail.

I’m going to need a nap before any sort of magic practice, if this keeps up, Rhys complains to himself. He misses Evelyn, the quiet companionableness of their meals together, even if the food was less than divine. Duke Aonghus’s announcement that it is time for them to go to the gardens comes as quite a relief to Rhys.

“Please be patient with her,” the Duke admonishes him quietly as they fly slowly together out of their dwelling, even as Duchess Muirgel calls her well-wishes after them. “We had some trouble trying to have a child, you see, and she was so glad to have delivered a healthy, happy baby boy. We both were overjoyed. But then, to have you taken from us so soon after your arrival…. I feared she would never recover. To have you home again is a dream come true for her, and she can hardly contain her joy.”

“Oh,” Rhys answers, unsure of how to respond. Do faeries have children the same way humans do? Is there some sort of ritual?

Duke Aonghus laughs gently. “I know you must have a lot of questions. It is much the same for us as it is for humans, the business of having children. But as I know you learned yesterday, we can change our appearances at will, with the right spells, so there are…many opportunities for experimentation.”

“Um…maybe let’s start with…something else.”

“Oh, we were not going to start with transformation spells. Helping you fly more naturally has to be the first step. Flap from the base of the wing, like this, and then you can move the tips and the edges to help with steering. There, like that. That is more how it should be. You learn quickly.”

“I want to learn this. If I’m going to be here, I need to learn everything, eventually.”

“Aye, but there is no need to rush things, even so. We live forever, if silver or beasts of darkness do not interfere.”

“Forever? You mean, we’re…immortal?”

“Yes. So you will have a long time to woo that new ward of Magister Diarmaid.”

“Saoirse? You think I should woo Saoirse?”

“You fancy her, do you not?”

Rhys blushes but cannot find words to counter Duke Aonghus’s knowing smirk.

“Nothing to be ashamed of there, lad. She is beautiful and talented and kind, at least from her showing at Court yesterday. You could certainly do worse,” Duke Aonghus points out sagely.

“She can probably do better,” Rhys replies, choosing to focus on the more intricate details of flying rather than the Duke’s expression.

“No son of mine will be selling himself short like that, not while I can hear it. The standards of the human world no longer apply to you.”

“She’s already shown she can do so much with magic. She saved my life, and I—”

“Have not really tried to use any magic at all yet, have you?”

“…No.”

“So you will start now, and we will see. But your worth is not and should not be determined by whatever happens here today.”

They have reached the gardens, a large, somewhat open, common space in sight of the Palace of the Faerie Queen. The ground is covered in mosses and small flowers, and large trees spaced widely apart tower overhead, making it pleasantly shady. A sweet-scented breeze wafts through the area. Faintly, Rhys hears voices in the leaves overhead, but he tries to ignore them. Today, Duke Aonghus will be his teacher.

“All right. How do I start?” Rhys asks Duke Aonghus, having newfound respect for the man who claims to be his father.

“First, we will land. You are new enough at flying that hovering while trying to learn spells and charms seems like doing too much, too soon, in my mind,” Duke Aonghus decides. Rhys obediently lowers himself to the ground. His feet alight softly on the springy moss; Duke Aonghus is a better flying instructor than Seamus and Kyrie proved to be during their brief lesson yesterday. “Very good. Flying will come easily to you, I think. Now, the next thing to understand is that your friend Saoirse is not typical. Though all of us have power in us, the vast majority of us must use words, gestures, a melody, or something to use that power, and there are many skills that you must learn to control and direct it properly.”

“Noted. And then?”

“Try just focusing on flowers there by your feet. The word zanzri means ‘transform’. Take a few moments to focus your energy on the flowers before saying the word, and it will help to point at them, as well.”

This all seems a bit silly to Rhys, but he didn’t know faeries were real at his previous sunrise, so he takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and concentrates on the flowers. Several moments go by before he opens his eyes, points at the flowers, and says, “Zanzri.”

Rhys and Duke Aonghus are both startled to see that the moment the word leaves Rhys’s lips, the flowers blacken, shrivel, and then crumble to dust.