The Lost Kingdom (The Fifth Element Chronicles)

Chapter 17 [part 1]

If you had told me what my life would be a year ago, I wouldn't have believed you.

If you had said I would be spending a week with a pirate in a remote Kingdom trying to reach a magical tree that would grant me the wish to save a lot of people from darkness. And, of course, that I would also be an heir princess to the throne. 

Yes, that was a lot of things I wouldn't have believed.

Caelus didn't seem overly discouraged by waiting a week, he didn't feel the pressure to go home that I did.

We made our way back to the meadow that would apparently be our place for a while, and there he pulled a small container out of his bag.

'What's that?'

'Magic.'

I thought he was joking, but no, he was telling the truth.

He threw some of the contents on the grass, and an incredibly large tent appeared in front of us, one as big as the ones they had in the Lost Kingdom.

'What did you do? We weren't allowed to use magic.'

'Relax princess, they said we weren't allowed to use our magic. This magic is fairy dust, from a fairy who wouldn't mind if we slept on something other than dirt for a week.'

'You've had fairy dust all this time and you're just now thinking of using it?'

He smiled at me and opened the entry to the tent.

As I stepped inside I couldn't help but be amazed. It was gigantic, full of luxuries you would never see in a tent. And two beds thankfully. I missed sleeping in a bed.

'Fairy dust only works if the fairy is nearby. When we were in other Kingdoms it wasn't very likely that our little friend would be around.'

'Please don't tell me you stole it.'

'Great, I don't have to tell you anything then.'

A week seemed like a long time when the fairy told us, but I must admit it went by rather quickly.

We developed a routine. We would wake up early, and go in search of fruits to eat. I ate more fruit in that week than I ever had in my life. Then it was time to train. Yes, I complained about it a lot, but I couldn't help it. Caelus decided he would teach me how to fight, and during those days, he made sure I at least held a sword properly.

'Hopefully, at this pace, you'll know how to fight back in about twenty years.'

'Funny, let's go again.'

I became obsessed with trying to beat him, but honestly, I didn't achieve much in a week.

The nights were the hardest, because that's when it was just the two of us with our questions and answers.

'How did you manage to establish the Lost Kingdom?' I asked him one night when we were both lying in our respective beds.

'It's a long story.'

'Time is exactly what we have.'

He sighed and began to recount it to me.

'I had escaped from... from a place I didn't want to go back to. I was alone when I came to the old Kingdom. That territory was practically cursed. But the shadow boy didn't mind too much. I'm a survivor Gaia, I always was. I started out stealing in the surrounding villages. I got pretty good at it before people found out a little boy was stealing from them. When that stopped being useful, I looked for other villages. Some time later, I started to expand my work, looked for survivors like me, and we became a family. Then people came. They needed a place to live after the magic was lost. They came, they set up their tents, and we promised them that we would supply them with whatever we stole. Because if you really think about it, we don't steal, we just give them back what is theirs, what was taken from them.'