SciFi and Fantasy Stories: Love your Enemies 31-32

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I hold my breath, waiting and listening for what is going to happen now, all the while marvelling at Josie's bravery. In the village, everyone says spies are nothing but cowards who only want to get on the good side of the elves. But to come right up here and give an elf a proper yelling at, that is braver than what I have been doing these past few months, that is braver than smudging the elf sidewalks with mud like the rebel girls do, that is braver than setting carriages on fire and shouting slogans that no one ever listens to.

But will the prince listen to her?

Suddenly, I hear him shouting commands; hasty footsteps pass up and down in front of the door, and I hear annoyed and confused voices… and then, silence. He must have gone. Maybe he's forgotten that I'm still around. Maybe I should just leave… But I can't go without telling him.

I sink into a chair, noticing only now that I'm trembling slightly after what I've heard. I never thought the prince could be this harsh. And I never thought Josie could be this direct about her feelings. And even though I threw stones after her when Grandmama wasn't watching, and called her a spy and a slut like the rebel girls did, I realise now that I never really, truly believed she was those things – and now I know that they were true all along.

I look at the engagement ring on my finger, the small diamond blinking happily and bringing light into this depressingly dark room. Why didn't I notice before how dark and gloomy this palace really is? Why do I only see now the dust mites floating around the thin beams of pale light that manage to slip past the stiflingly thick curtains holding them out? Did I really have to almost drown myself before noticing that a life with the prince is nothing for me?

With a creak, the door opens and the prince comes back in again, startling me from my thoughts. He looks preoccupied, and at first I almost think he has forgotten that I'm in the room. "Stay seated," he says hastily, seeing that I'm about to get up, and sweeps over to his desk, where he bends down to scribble a quick note.

I stand up anyway. "What's happened about Josie?" I ask without thinking.

"Why should you care?" Without looking up, the prince crumples up the note he was writing, throws it aside and rummages in a drawer to find a new sheet of paper.

"It's your child as well as hers," I say cautiously.

"For goodness' sake, I know!" An ink bottle shatters on the floor. "Do you think I can do anything about it? Can I change anything for her? She's a human – if I help her and the family finds out, I shall be in more trouble than you can imagine!"

"But you can help her!" I exclaim. "I'm human and you asked me to marry you – why can't you do the same for her?"

With a deep, annoyed sigh, the prince drops his pen on the desk and sits down, hiding his head in his hands.

"Didn't you tell me just yesterday that whatever you do, even the emperor can't kill you or disinherit you or anything? You'd get in as much trouble marrying me as you would if you married Josephine. She needs you now. You must have loved her at some point; why then don't you fulfil her promises now?"

He looks up. "Will not you marry me?" he asks, hesitatingly.

There it is; he's asked me. Now I can't escape telling him anymore. Slowly I shake my head. "Sorry," I whisper, and I hold up my hand so he can see the engagement ring.

He sighs again and turns away. "Well," he says after a while, his voice dull and emotionless, "I wish you and Lord Cirion all happiness." I know he doesn't mean it. I know that I have hurt him. Somehow I almost feel bad, saying it to him like this, only mere minutes after his row with Josie. But I had to tell him sometime – even if it's a horrible time to do so.

"I know you have the power to just go ahead and punish us if you like," I say, looking at the thoroughly polished floor. "Please, will you let us go, and stop anyone else from finding out?" I nervously chew my lip. "And if they do, will you prevent them from doing anything to us?"

"Why should you trust me?" the prince asks, still not looking at me. "You heard everything just now. I can't keep promises, there you go!"

"You can if you just want to," I say softly. "You're the prince, aren't you?" He looks away. "Even the emperor can't stop you if you really try to change something – you said that yourself. Look, you're a half-elf; doesn't that mean you have an obligation to try and help us humans as much as you can? You're the one who has power here! We can't change anything – you can. You should know better than to let your elf side take over. If you just tried, you could do so many good things!

"For one, you could supply cleaner water to the human villages. If all the elves are so scared of getting sick because of us, why don't you sort out the water first and prevent half the diseases in the first place? Secondly, you should do something about the conditions at the slave camps – if you let some of the slaves go, everyone will trust you much better and the rebels will revolt far less, I can assure you! And thirdly, you could clean up your own messy life by finding Josie, marrying her and giving her all you promised. That can't be so hard, can it?"

I take a deep breath, and some moments pass before I realise what I've just said. Shocked, I glance up at him to see if he is angry. But he just looks at me in silence for a while. Then he nods and says, "I shall do all I can." Reaching out for his black quill pen, he finally writes a note that he doesn't throw across the room. "You may go," he says, without looking up.

Inwardly sighing with relief, but at the same time feeling my heart beat so fast I'm sure it'll burst if I'm not careful, I pick up my suitcase again and head for the door. Before I go, I turn to him once more. "Thank you," I whisper. "I'm sorry about… you know. It would never have worked out. But I'm sure you can still make Josie happy, and she'll forgive you. I wish you the best, should that be your decision. Good-bye." I turn and leave, abandoning the one possibility I ever had of living a well-off, Elvish life.

Somehow, my heart feels lighter as I leave the palace and walk for the last time past its great golden gates. I walk down the elves' sidewalk for a few metres. But it doesn't feel right. I take one step, leaving the sidewalk, my foot falling into the mud of the human pathway with a squelch. Somehow, for the first time in my life, I like that sound. After a few steps, I take off one shoe, then the other. Then I run the rest of the way, down the muddy road that I used to hate so much, until I reach the shack of our new larger family.

"I'm home!" I shout, stumbling over old Sylvia's gardening boots as I enter through the squint doorway.

I've hardly dumped the suitcase into a corner when I'm immediately swamped with the chatter of joyful relatives and the jabbering questions of curious neighbours, all of them wanting to know exactly where I've been and what I've done and why I'm wearing such a fancy dress and why on Earth I'm looking like an elf.

Some keep their distance, muttering something about treason or commenting on my cheek at wearing such a dress to the village. But half the villagers are gathering around me, congratulating me, some with tears in their eyes, admiring me for succeeding in what no one else has done for more than ten years.

"You're getting married!" the pastor exclaims. "Now I can finally get that wedding liturgy back into practise!"

"I'll make the wedding dress!" someone cries.

"No! Me!" someone else interjects.

"What – I'm the best seamstress in the village, of course I will sew it!" a third lady yells.

"Oy! Stop fighting over it; I'm her grandmother, I'll decide!" Grandmama exclaims.

While they all start a big row over who'll do what for the wedding, I manage to untangle myself from the throng and escape into the house. The last I see before I manage to shut the door, Ophelia and another girl are almost tearing each other's hair out, fighting over who will pick flowers for the bouquet, while the Hag insists loudly that she'll cook all the wedding snacks. They don't even notice that I'm gone, which is a good thing.

Finally alone, I sigh deeply and lean back against the wall – big mistake. Before I know what's happening, the wall is tipping backwards and I have to quickly jump up and try to pull it back upright before the roof falls in. How could I ever have forgotten that to lean against the wall of a human shack is a life risk? I definitely need to get used to living like a human again – I'm quite out of practise!

"Careful!" Cirion exclaims, quickly coming to help me. I am grateful for his strong hands – Grandmama would truly murder me once and for all if I ruined Sylvia's house, even forgetting how happy she is that I've returned!

"So here you are!" I say once the wall is as back in its place. "Are you hiding from the rebels who are out to kill you, or just escaping from all the girls who think you're cute?"

"Both, probably," he smiles, stroking some loose strands of hair from my face.

"Are you sorry yet that you chose to live here with me?" I ask, stepping closer to him and slipping my hands in his. "Are you regretting your decision to marry a human?"

"Why should I? As long as I can be with you, I will endure everything."

I laugh tonelessly. "Well, maybe you'll change your mind once you've tasted Sylvia's cooking. And once they all pile us with wedding gifts from the rubbish dump!"

I guess he's had enough of my negativity and wants to shut me up, for he leans down and kisses me, like he did that first time so many months ago, when I was afraid and worried and didn't know how my life could go on. And just like that first time, I am filled with happiness, and with wonder at how this could be happening – how in less than a week, we'll be husband and wife; how he has sacrificed everything, just for me; how he has ignored all those things that should be keeping us apart…

Abruptly, I break away.

"What is it?" Cirion asks, and I laugh at his almost worried tone.

"I just forgot something." I reach up and carefully take off the fake elf ears that I wore one last time to see the prince, and put them aside on the kitchen counter – just in case I might use them in future.

Then I turn to Cirion again. "All right. Where were we?"

--THE END--

I am walking down the dirty street, mud spattering over my legs and the tattered hem of my skirt. Beside me, Ruhan patters along on her little feet, clutching my hand with one of her own, while with the other she clings to her favourite doll, a rather ugly thing Mama made for her out of an old corn cob the goat didn't want to eat.

"My feet are dirty," she whines – she definitely inherited that sense for cleanliness from her father!

"We're almost there," I tell her. "Look, there's the palace already."

Ruhan blinks against the sunlight and brushes some golden-brown hair from her beautiful green eyes – she's already too pretty to be true, though maybe as her mother I'm just biased. Sylvia says she's the prettiest thing to ever walk this earth, Mama says all mixed-race children look far prettier than so-called 'pure-bloods', while Ophelia – who I'm very sure is just being jealous – keeps saying she's plump and chubby because I overdo on her lunches. Well, I can't help it that we suddenly have a bit more food around, or that Ruhan gets cleaner water than Ophelia and I used to. Nowadays it even looks slightly transparent, which is almost miraculous.

The guard at the palace gate knows me quite well, since he sees me five days a week, and greets me with the usual disgusted look, which I return with my oh-so-nasty glare of contempt. This has become almost a kind of tradition between us over the past five years, ever since Cirion received his new job at the palace. Ruhan just stares up at the guard with wide eyes, nervously sucking her thumb – she just won't be convinced that at four years old, she's too old to be sucking things.

"Don't touch anything," I say once we enter the palace itself.

"You say that every time," Ruhan mumbles.

"That's because you never listen." I quickly snatch her hand that has been sneaking towards a little shiny ornament that looks like it'll break if you just look at it.

Once upstairs, I knock on the usual door. "Come in!" Cirion calls, as he always does, knowing it is me. I open the door to find him putting away the school books, telling his obedient pupil, Princess Josephine, what she has to do for homework.

While I put down the bowl of steaming lunch on a table, along with the wooden spoon I brought along, Ruhan looks shyly at the little prince, Josie's son, all the while clinging to my skirt. At least I've finally made her get rid of that habit she used to have, of hiding under my dress whenever she was embarrassed! But once the boy and his mother are out, she seems to feel more confident and skips around the room, chattering to the doll in her made-up mixture of Elvish and English.

"How has work been so far?" I ask as Cirion comes to my side, putting his arm around my waist. "Is your student learning well?"

"Not as well as you did," he replies, smiling, and sits down.

I poke him with my elbow. "Don't insult the princess!" I laugh. "You want them to send my mother back to the work camp and mess up the water again? No thanks! Here, eat your lunch, Teacher Cirion."

I'm so glad the prince gave him this job. I'm so glad about everything that has happened over the past five years. Of course, things aren't always going well – we still have Raids, we still have to scrounge for a living and our family in particular is looked down upon by people – both humans and elves. But with all the improvements that have been going on, I don't think I would call it far-fetched to already imagine a happy future for my daughter.

"Ruhan!" I call. "It's time to go! We still have to fetch water for your Grandmama."

"But I only just started having fun!" she cries. She never gets so much playing space at home.

"Don't worry, we'll come again tomorrow. Go on, give your Papa a good-bye kiss."

She leans up on tip-toes and plants a little kiss on Cirion's cheek with a smack. "Bye-bye Papa," she says, then hops over to the door, singing a rebel song – which she probably doesn't know the meaning of – loudly and extremely off-key.

"I think I'd better get her to sing something else before anyone in the palace notices," I say, smiling, and lean down to kiss him. I still feel like I'm flying to heaven every time he kisses me… I don't think I'll ever lose that feeling.

"We shall burn their houses down, march the emp'ror off his throne, till at last we'll all be free!" Ruhan sings noisily, thumping the rhythm on the door handle.

"Enjoy your lunch!" I smile, then hurry over to Ruhan, grabbing her hand and suggesting, "Why don't we sing that song you learnt from Grandmummy yesterday?"

Outside the sun is shining, the guard is glaring, the mud is stinking – though not as much as it used to now that they've finally made some slaves fix the broken sewer –, the birds are singing and some mangy stray dogs are lying around, their tongues lolling, enjoying the beautiful summer weather.

Ruhan jumps from mud puddle to mud puddle, practising her counting but getting five and nine confused, as well as forgetting number six. As she hops around ahead, I stand still for a while and close my eyes. I try to imagine life without Cirion, without my little girl, but I just can't. I try to imagine what it would be like if I hadn't forgiven him, if I had refused him and stayed unmarried, but it doesn't work. I try to imagine what might have happened if I hadn't told the prince to finally do something, but my mind stays blank.

And I'm glad it does.