"Legend of the Whisper Wood, Ch. 2" by Jon Midget

Chapter 2: The Princess & the King

He sat on an old wooden stool, the young man who would be King. in a small, bare, empty room. A small lamp held a single burning candle, the amber casing amplifying the flickering flame into a cascade of deep brown light dancing with the shadows of the his face. A green curtain, dark as threaded moss, hung in the doorway.

He did not move. Not even his wings, almost dark enough to look black, twitched or swayed. Only his eyes, grey as flint, flickered back and forth, looking for any sign from the curtain that it was time. The feathers on his arms were slightly raised from his brown skin, but he gave no other acknowledgment to the cold damp in the air.

A muffled roar erupted from behind the curtain and slowly faded back into silence. The candle in the lamp melted to one side, setting the wick and flame right against the amber casing, and the scent of wispy ash drifted in the room. The young man did not move. Another roar came from behind the curtain. Another lingering roll of silence.

The curtains parted. A man came through the doorway, his tunic crested and sashed with the bright purples and golds of the ceremonial palace robes. He made a short bow, but his eyes never left those of the young man, still sitting motionless on the stool.

"It is time, Damarion," the man said. He held up a wooden staff, polished almost into black flint and studded with green and red jewels. "Your subjects await you in the hall."

"Then ... this is it," the young man said. He stood up from the stool. Damarion, the Crown Prince, the next Ruler over the People of the Wood, the Heir to the Throne in Valora, stood from the stool and took a single step toward the curtained doorway. He stopped.

"There is nothing to fear," the man said.

"It is not fear," Damarion replied. He reached to the lamp, still filling the room with the ashy smoke, and pinched the flame into nothingness. He took took a deep breath, took hold of the jewelled staff, and disappeared into the doorway.

And so Damarion was named King that day.

He was fifteen years old.

The ceremonies had taken several hours, and more than a thousand of his subjects filled Great Hall of the Myriad Palace to experience it all—the retelling of the first of the People of the Wood, given wings by the Sungods; the reenactment of the first builders of the cities in the treetops; the celebratory dance of the first warriors to drive the dragons into the distant mountains; the recount of the history of the Kings of the People of the Wood; the prayer sending the soul of the deceased king to theLand of the Stars.

And finally, the final ceremony, when Damarion appeared to receive the crown. The people bowed to him, offered a prayer to the Moongods to let the young man rule in Wisdom and Truth.

And it was over.

The subjects filed out, and King Damarion was left to himself again, this time sitting on a gold-plated throne in the vast Great Hall, where the tapestries of the Aluvian Houses hung from the rafters far above and the lamp-light glowed with the soft green of stained glass.

He had been the youngest child of the previous king.

Late that night, he stood from the throne. He walked up and down the Great Hall, setting the cup on each lantern and putting out the light until only darkness remained. He breathed deeply, letting the scent of stale, decaying wood fill his body. Stretching out his wings, he closed his eyes and lifted his arms into the air. Slowly, the faint rhythms and chants of the Dryads, seeping up from the forest bed outside the palace and a thousand feet below, echoed in his ears. His breathing began to find the patterns in the chaotic music, and his legs tensed and relaxed with the rhythm.

His eyes opened. The darkness and music remained.

He folded his wings tightly to his back and quickly left the hall, careful that each step went against the rhythm of the Dryads' music. Gliding down the passages, almost as if flying—though his wings remained pressed against his back—he found his bedroom. He went inside and threw himself to his bed, where he slept restlessly, his mind filled with raging dreams of broken shards of blackened, polished wood.

His family had all died when a thunderstorm raged into Valora. Lightning struck the Royal House, and it burned, killing everyone inside.

King Damarion did not return to the Great Hall for six days. But when he did, the youth was gone. His eyes had faded, like a storm cloud blowing away into the sunrise, and his face looked worn. He became kind and wise. He smiled gently to his subjects, and judged his people firmly but without malice.

Three months later, he announced to his advisors that he was to be married. The woman was the fourteen-year-old daughter of a vase painter. Among the circles of the greater families, the society of the Alluvian Houses, King Damarion's name was whispered in back corners of their meetings. Among the commoners, the People of the Wood who lived their lives free from the lonely, bitter life of the Alluvian Houses, King Damarion's name was sung to the music of the great poets. It was praised in their casual conversations fluttering in and out of the markets and parkways.

Disdain and praise continued on the wedding day, in which Damarion turned folded wings to tradition and married the young woman, not in the Great Hall of Valora, but on a small branch in her home village, where not a single green torch lit the ceremony.

A child was conceived that night.

Five months later that child came early, stillborn, and killed the young Queen.

King Damarion was not yet seventeen.

The heads of the Alluvian Houses were quick to help him understand how it was—that the Sungods had disapproved of his marriage and punished him appropriately. And Aletha, the goddess of the lorelais, had taken her blessing from his reign.

King Damarion shut himself into his chambers again.

Two weeks later, late at night, he came out and wandered aimlessly through the dark and empty passages. A single beam of moonlight shined through an open window. The moon, nearly full, passed between a gap in the great branches and trees far overhead. A darksparrow called outside, a hollow, deep sound that lingered in the room.

Damarion walked to the window. He stood there for several minutes, his arms resting on the hard, cold wood and the chill night wind grazing against his skin and feathers. It had rained that evening, and he could smell the spiced scent of the wet mosses.

The city was dark and quiet. Buildings and pathways and hanging gardens twisted and entwined with the lorelai branches, and in the dark it was impossible to tell where nature ended and artifact began. Towers arched and curved toward the dark, dark canopy. No torchlight could be seen, either from the city or the palace windows below.

His mind wandered into the dark, silent homes carved and constructed throughout Valora. To where lovers lay, arms wrapped around each other and fingers idly brushing through each other's feathers. To where the children lay, dreaming of wings mature enough to take flight. To where the elders lay, wondering when they will join their loved ones who have passed to the realms of the Sun and Moon.

There are a thousand different stories, Damarion thought, in this one city alone. A thousand different stories filled with grief and pain and happiness and joy and the countless mundane ways to fill their lives—talk of rain, dusting of stools—and a thousand different ways of catching the wind and soaring up beyond the treetops into the open air where nothing could touch them except the sun and moon and stars.

My people deserve better. They deserve a king.

His breathing slowed. He wiped tears from his face, and felt his body become firm. His people needed him. And he would give himself to them.

And then a noise rose to his ears.

Music. Soft, almost inaudible, but frantic and wild, filled with the fury and rhythms of the earth and soil. Not a sound from the city. Not a sound that could be made by the People of the Wood. But a sound more tangible than noise, a sound that sent his thoughts into nothingness and instincts into action.

It was night.

The Dryads were dancing.

Dancing far below. Even if he leapt from the palace right then he could never reach them before sunrise—before their bodies disappeared and their spirits returned to the grass and soil and rocks and rivers and trees that were their homes. And he knew the dangers.

But he also knew the music would return at the next sunset, and the spirits would be called out again tomorrow, and the night after, and the night after, and every night until the end of time. He would find them. They were always there.

He climbed out the window and flew to the large branch below—the greatest of the lorelai branches. The foundation of Valora. As soon as his feet touched the great branch, he ran, following its natural path, his steps and entire body moving with the rhythms of the music. A wind rushed across the city and drowned out the sound, but his body could still feel it. He followed the branch out the city—past the gardens, the plazas, and the buildings—until he came to an edge far from anything created by the People of the Wood and hidden from the moonlight by a thick canopy above.

Beyond the edge was nothing but darkness.

He jumped.

The air billowed beneath his outstretched wings and let it carry him down, floating weightlessly and sightless, feeling the night and his world among the People of the Wood pass with each moment floating down, until his bare feet finally pressed against the cool moss and stiff grass on the ground.

He sat on the grass. The music was far away, and it faded after a moment, when the first bits of light crept to the forest bed, turning the black night into dark shadows intermittent with small flutters of sunlight dancing on the grass. The air was chill, and mist wisped in and out. He sat in a meadow.

The Wood was empty. The only movement was the grass he brushed through as he moved around. He couldn't see the city overhead, nor could he see more than a few dozen feet into the forest, which was so filled with smaller trees that he could not see where the closest giant lorelais met the ground. Several of the massive trunks rose above the line of smaller trees, their dark forms climbing upward until they disappeared in the hazy shadows of the canopy far, far overhead. The air smelled like damp cinnamon.

He wandered through the Wood, in and out of meadows and glen, thick with underbrush and moss. Giant black beetles climbed on dead branches, clicking and chirping as if singing. Small balls of fur, dark red and green, rolled in and out of the grass while fluting odd melancholy trills.

The shadows moved slowly, and the morning passed into afternoon. The forest bed never became light or warm. The air never became heave or stale. Dew stayed on the leaves and twigs and blades of grass.

He sat against a fallen log, hungry and tired, and waited for the sunlight to disappear. He dozed, and later woke, his wings sore, as if they had spent an entire night tangled awkwardly with each other. His hands had marks from the rocks that had been pressing into them.

The air had chilled even more. The sun was completely out of sight, blocked from view by the lorelais, and the meadow and trees around him had a slight red and orange tint to them. Each of his breaths puffed into mist.

Wildflowers opened, suddenly filling the Wood and meadows with reds, blues, purples, and yellows where nothing but browns and greens had been before. He looked around and around, stunned that he had not see the flowers before. Why did I see nothing but trees and grass? Only now, in the twilight of approaching night and amid the suddenly opened flowers, could he see it all—the ferns, the bushes, the vines.

Bees and butterflies suddenly filled the air, going from petal to petal, drinking the nectar and spreading the pollen, and hundreds of dragonflies darted in the air. The flutter of birds rustled in and out of the trees, and their calls erupted in the air—squawking, fluting, chirping, and a dozen different variations. Small mammals scurried along the ground, and the odd little fluting furballs began rolling around and jumping in the air en masse.

And then the music began.

Directionless, everywhere and nowhere, it began with drumming—so soft and low that Damarion more felt the beats than heard them. The insects buzzed faster and faster, and the birds flew frantically from tree to tree, barely touching down before lifting off again. Everything darkened. The drumming entwined with a melody, a frenzied unspeakable tune that seemed to seep out of the ground, and his entire mined swirled with the song until his body shook.

And when the last bit of sunlight had disappeared darkness overtook the Wood—but only for a moment. A bright green flash erupted from the air, blinding the young king and sending him sprawling to the ground.

When he lifted his head, they were there. The spirits of the Wood. The Dryads.

Dozens of them, glowing with iridescent greens and blues and purples. The entire Wood shimmered and sparkled as the light glimmered of the dew and frost crystals that filled the air and glazed the open flowers.

At first all he could see was the light and the movement. The twirling, the spinning, the jumping, the outstretched arms reaching and reaching almost to the canopy. The legs kicking and the hair—Dear Gods!—the hair, the shimmering silver locks thrashing wildly about. The movement surrounded him, encircled him, spiraled around him, while he sat motionless, terrified to disturb anything—even the air with his misty breath.

The rhythm of the music and the dance began resonating iin his body, and he could at last follow and see the Dryads. Their clothing shimmered against their skin, their brown or gold or green or silver or blue skin, and looked more like leaves and silk and light than cloth. It moved with their bodies and dance so perfectly that, at times, he wasn't sure if it was there or not.

Both the males' and females' hair was long and filled with twigs and leaves in the wild curls. Like their skin, their hair was a range of color, but when the light hit the hair just right, regardless of what color it had been, silver light glimmered off as if from a mirror.

Occasionally, for small abrupt moments, Damarion could see their eyes. Their wild, cold, distant, alien eyes. In their wild dancing, their eyes would briefly meet his, but that was all. There was no connection, no lingering sense of perception, no sense of unspoken understanding. The Dryads were one thing and he was something else. They were from the earth, and he, Damarion began to remember, was from the sky.

The Dryads left.

They had been there, dancing in a frenzy, and then they were gone. Gone to another clearing in the Wood, and without them there in front of him the night enveloped Damarion. Their light did not linger where they were not. Nor did the music. He could hear it, but it was distant and soft and directionless. He knew there was no way to follow them.

He stood there, in the darkness, silently, waiting for the hours to pass. For morning to come. For the daylight that would lead him back to the tops of the lorelai trees—back to his city and his People, and to his duties as a King. He was ready. He prayed to the Sungods for the strength and wisdom to do what was needed.

But as he knelt in that dark meadow a green light interrupted his thoughts. A Dryad, a woman, stood before him and stared into his eyes. There was no music. She did not dance. She did not look away from him. He could not look away from her.

"Why do I stand still?" she asked, her voice a terrified hush, but still ringing like a trumpet. "Why do I not dance? Why do my eyes seek yours and refuse to pass on?"

"I do not know," Damarion whispered.

She stepped toward him until only a wisp of air separated them. Neither his eyes nor hers wavered. She touched her fingers to his forehead and lightly ran them across, and then down his cheek. They heard no sound but their breaths.

"Touch me," she said.

He raised his hand, but did nothing more. It shook—until she took ahold of it and touched it to her mouth.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"I am the spirit of the meadow at your feet," she said.

"What is your name?"

"We do not tell our names to the People of the Wood."

"May I tell you mine?"

"I do not know."

"I am Damarion."

"Damarion"

She took both of his hands into hers, pulled him to her until their bodies touched, and she opened her mouth to speak again. But she hesitated, and the first light from the rising sun broke through the trees overhead and fell on her shoulders. Her body dissolved into a silver mist, and a gust of wind blew it into nothingness.

Damarion's empty hands fell to his side.

He stood. His eyes looked at nothing but the empty space the Dryad had once been. He spread and beat his great wings, lifted off the ground, and flew back to the city in the treetops. As he flew, the meadow grass swayed back and forth with the wind.

Though the palace staff had been frantic at his disappearance, though the members of the court had whispered hushed, worried conversations about what would happen should he be found dead, though the Heads of the Alluvian houses had secretly positioned themselves for war should no clear successor be found, when Damarion flew into the throne room that evening, amid the entire court, nobody said a word.

"Minister," the king said, his voice firm and strong, "what business is set before the throne today?"

Uncertain glances and puzzled eyes were exchanged, but Damarion's eyes never left those of his Chief Minister, silently shuffling through his scrolls.

The ... ah ... governor of Loriel seeks audience over a question of right to passage ..."

And so the Chief Minister continued, outlining the business of the day. And King Damarion sat on his throne and listened to those who sought audience. He passed judgments, made decisions, and took an accounting from his officers. That night, he spoke to his servants, ate with the kitchen staff, and walked through the dark corridors of the palace, in awe of the artistry of the woodwork, as though he was walking through them for the first time.

He finally reached his chambers and laid himself on his bed and immediately fell asleep. He did not stir the entire night, and when the morning sun broke he immediately rose, dressed himself, and went straightway to the throne room to address the business of the day.

And so he continued, day after day, week after week, until months had passed and even the Heads of the Alluvian Houses talked among themselves, pleased with the leadership and maturity of their young, brilliant king. Even among the most remote colonies, the People of the Wood wondered if Damarion would become the greatest ruler to sit on the throne of Valora.

Until the day he finished with the day's work early and took a walk by himself through the farthest branches of the palace gardens. He reached the edge and peered down, looking for the unseen ground far, far below. Hesitating only a moment, he leapt.

As soon as his feet met the cool moss and soil, he ran frantically through the trees until he found the meadow. There he waited until sunset—when the flowers opened, the insects swarmed, the music began, and the ever-growing darkness exploded into the light of the Dryad's dance.

And she was there.

She rushed to him as soon as their eyes met, before she had began her dance. She threw her body against his, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him. Long and deep, until she finally pulled her face away, and they looked into each other's eyes. His dark, dim, and searching; hers bright, green, and glinted, as if she could see no further than his surface.

"I remember you," she said. "I remember nothing of yesterday, and I have remembered nothing for a thousand years, but I remember you."

"And I ..." he trailed off. "I came to find you."

"Will you dance with us tonight? With me tonight?"

"Yes."

She took his hand, and they ran through the Wood, following the music in and out of grove and meadow, flinging themselves wildly into and away each other, spinning and twirling, singing and shouting wordless melodies to the rhythms in the air, until Damarion fell to the ground, gasping for air. Morning approached.

"Come with me," she said.

"How?"

She reached for him, but before Damarion could grab ahold a ray of sunlight struck her skin, and her body disappeared again.

He closed his eyes and laid his head against the ground. He slept. Even after sunset, when the Wood awoke again and the spirit of the meadow grass found him, pleading with him to follow her, to dance with her, to sing with her, he slept. Only when daylight approached did he awaken. She sat just out of reach, weeping against a fallen log. She did not look up before dissolving again into oblivion.

Damarion returned to Valora that day. Again, nobody asked where he had disappeared to. Again, he carried on his work with newfound energy and dedication. He did so for moths, until he again heard the Dryads' song from outside his open window and leapt back down to the forest bed. He reached the bottom just before sunrise, and she was waiting for him.

"Come with me," she said before she disappeared.

He stayed in the meadow, restless, pacing through the grass, brushing through harshly, wondering if she could feel him. That night he did not know if the flowers opened again. He did not notice whether the insects returned, if the birds flocked, or if the furry creatures came out again. He did not see the other Dryads dancing around him. All he saw was her, and she led him into hidden valleys, where the other Dryads would not go. And there they spent the night together, in frenzied dance, until morning came and they pleaded to each other:

"Come with me."

And when she left him he lay in the meadow grass and slept. When night came she awakened him, and they danced again and kept themselves apart and knew nothing but each other until daylight came and they pleaded again:

"Come with me."

She disappeared. He slept. She awoke him. They danced. They pleaded:

"Come with me."

"Come with me."

"Come with me."

Until the morning came when Damarion remembered his life at the top of the trees, in a city and a palace whose towers touched the sky, and he cursed the Sungods and the Moongods and cried out in despair, cursing the grasses of the meadow.

And this time, when he returned to Valora, his people demanded to know where he had been. His ministers rebuked him. The Heads of the Alluvian Houses swore at him. But their questions and demands sent the young king into a fury, and he shut himself into his chambers.

Days passed.

He came out again. And he attended to the affairs of the kingdom, but he would say nothing of the Dryad or their dance. Nor would he speak of it when he disappeared again a month later. Nor would he speak of it any time he left and came back.

He would not even say anything when, after years of disappearing for moths at a time, he returned with an infant in his arms, a child he called his daughter.

He said nothing about the infant's appearance—the shockingly fair skin, almost imperceptibly green, her bizarre white wings highlighted with streaks of pine, or her deep, cold, pale green eyes.

Nobody asked for an explanation, because the King had simply thrust the infant into the arms of a servant woman and ordered her to take care of the girl. The woman knew not how to respond, but looked at the strange child.

"She looks like a fern at sunrise," the woman said.

"Keep her away from me!" the King shouted back. He spat at the child and fled to his chambers, shouting the entire way, "Keep it away from me! Keep its eyes away from me!"

The child became known as Fauna, the common name for the giant ferns that grew on the lorelai branches. That is what the servants at the palace called her. The King never gave her a name.

Years passed. King Damarion stayed in Valora less and less until he disappeared entirely for more than a year. The People of the Wood gathered from all over the kingdom, called by the Heads of the Alluvian Houses, and granted all powers to King Damarion's daughter, the girl called Princess Fauna. She was eleven.

And she was cold.

Cold as those icy green eyes. Cold as her snowy feathers.

Because she had heard the whispers from the dark corners of the halls. She had heard them degrade her unknown mother. She had heard them curse her father. She had heard them wonder what forbidden union could have possibly created a creature such as her.

Sometime during her nineteenth year, for nobody knew on what day she was born, the dragons attacked from the North. Messengers came to Valora, telling the Princess of the destruction and the death.

As Princess Fauna began to respond the doors to the Great Hall burst open. Damarion, the King, her father, a matted heap of leaves and twigs, of filthy rags and rotting vegetation, had returned. The crowd silenced. Mud dripped from his face and dripped on the floor. He staggered toward the throne, and the people of the court backed away, wincing at the sight and the stench.

"Do you not know your King?" He demanded in slurred, almost unintelligible speech. "Why do you not bow to your King?"

"Father!"

Princess Fauna rose from her seat and stood on the pedestal before the throne, poised like a hawk about to slaughter a squirrel.

"Who is this fiend at my throne?" the King demanded. "Who has dared usurp ..."

He trailed off. He stopped walking. His eyes watered, and his hands shook as he gazed at his daughter. He could not blink. He could not remove his eyes from her. He could think of nothing but the alien white feathers, the streaks of green, and the cold, frenzied green eyes.

"Like a fern at sunrise," he whispered.

He could not move.

"Father," Fauna whispered.

She stepped from the pedestal, hesitated, and finally rushed to her father. She reached for his hands, but at her touch he flinched, shoved her away, and flung his fists at her. His entire body thrashed about until he tripped on his own rotting clothes and crumpled into a heap.

"Leave me!" he cried, his tears mixing with the mud on the floor. "By the gods, leave me. Leave me."

Fauna stepped back. She nodded toward two guards, who helped the sobbing King to his feet and led him out of the Great Hall. Silence filled the room until it seemed the walls would explode from the pressure. The Chief Minister approached the her from behind.

"Princes Fauna?" He laid a hand to her shoulder.

She spun around, her eyes nearly sending the man to his knees.

"The dragons," she said. "Take me to them and I will destroy them."

"Yes, Princess," the Chief Minister said. "I will inform the army to ready themselves—"

"I said," she cut him off, "that I will destroy them. Not the army. There is no time for an army. I will take the palace guard," she pointed to them, ignoring their stunned faces, "and we will leave now."

When she and her guard reached the northern colonies, the heat from the burning Wood singed and blackened their faces. Their lungs seared with each breath. In the distance they saw the dragons, three great winged beasts twisting about in the air and shrieking madly. Their bodies, just silhouettes in front of the great fires, turned and lunged toward the Princess and her guard.

Fauna leapt into the air at the same time her guard stepped back. her wings beat furiously, and she held her sword in one outstretched hand. For one horrifying moment the guard watched their Princess's mad suicide charge, until they raised their voices, stretched forth their wings, and plunged with her, straight toward the dragons.

That night the guard wrapped their dead in the traditional lorelai branches and sent the bodies down to the forest bed below. Fauna watched in silence as they were dropped off the edge of the branch, all twenty-one who had perished in the fight.

Five had survived.

The dragons had been driven back to the mountains.

Fauna wanted to go home.

When she returned to the palace, her father was still in his room, barricaded in, and refused to see his daughter. She sat outside his door for an entire night, pleading with him again and again to open the door just once. Her father never answered. When morning came, she left the door and her father behind, quickly moving to the Great Hall, where her advisors waited.

"I am leaving," Fauna told them before they could even speak. "I will return in two weeks. Nobody is to follow me."

And so she left for the first time. In two weeks she returned. Her father was gone. She never saw or spoke to him again.