The bowl is light.
Njord tosses it onto his dining table and sits down with a sigh. The rigid wooden chair does little to soothe his cramps, attained from a full day of rewardless performing. He remembers all the times he'd return home with a bowl full of coins, treated to drinks and meals and loved by all.
When was the last time he earned such a bounty?
Winter is here, and snow blankets the ground. People hide inside their houses with bolted doors and gather around the fire, table set with toasted bread and mulled wine for their December celebration. They scurry around the village, they slip on ice, and they spare none of their change for the emaciated young man trying to dance on the streets.
Across the table is Njord's most prized possession, the fiddle he has been playing since childhood. The wood is chipped and the bow is frayed, but still he picks it up and runs his fingers over the strings, thinking about when these blistered fingers and aching arms were worth it.
He is hungry.
As usual, there is nothing in his cupboards, not even a crust of bread. Njord gets up from his chair, stumbling and suppressing frustrated tears as he leaves his house. He makes his way towards the woods.
The snow crunches with every step Njord takes. Frigid water seeps into the worn leather of his boots. He shivers and jumps to pluck tiny vermillion berries from a rowan tree with numb, unfeeling fingers. Carefully, he clambers up a blackthorn tree to pluck their midnight-blue sloes, storing them in his pocket next to the rowan berries. He shivers again.
He looks into the forest, beyond the berry trees he is used to picking from, beyond cobweb-strung trees and frost-covered leaves, beyond ice-slick stones and snow-covered blewit mushrooms. Njord finds the small, round mushrooms forming a perfect ring, and there is nothing inside it. He dares not near it, for nobody knows what happens to people who fall into fairy rings. He turns away. He tries to forget it.
He goes no farther than the juniper tree, pulling every berry he can see before trudging back home. The sun is setting, but the village is still very much alive — laughter flows from the local pub, children scream from one cottage, mindless chatter and the clinking of plates emanate from another.
Njord's house only has creaks as he pushes the door open and walks across the loose boards.
The harsh winter gale roars in from his open window, and, freezing, he devours the berries like an eagle would its prey. He almost laughs at himself, at his pitiful state; he was once a beautiful dancer, now he is a dying boy surviving on berries. Then he sneezes, rubbing his arms and his threadbare sleeves.
There are no ageing parents to tend to, nor pestering young ones that he can tell stories to. He has no loved one to hold or to kiss by a fireplace. There is only him, alone and far, far away from a family he ran away from in hopes of a better future. There is only him, slowly starving to death.
Njord heads for his bedroom and slumps down heavily on his thin, lumpy mattress. He curls up, stomach growling. His breath mists the air. Outside, the wind howls.
The cheery noises from outside slowly die down, and a few returning partygoers tromp past Njord's house. Their thundering steps feel like punches to the stomach to him; he covers his ears in an attempt to block them out. The tipsy singing of a young man, one perhaps his age, fills his ears, and he sighs. A young woman, who could be his lover, joining in and laughing drunkenly is only salt in the wound.
Tears, boiling and resentful, roll down Njord's cheeks as the group finally walks away and their conversation fades out of earshot. In a sudden burst of malcontent, he hits his mattress.
The wintry wind chills the tears tracing his face. It stings his eyes and sends a flurry of snow swirling in from the window. He wipes his face clean with the scratchy burlap sleeve of his shirt, wrapping his arms tighter around himself. He remembers himself two years ago, when he was a stubborn sixteen-year-old running from his parents and his baby brother with nothing but his best clothes and his fiddle, determined to make a new life.
And now, two years later, it is clear that he cannot emulate the applause and riches the people here gave him when he first arrived. The village is freezing almost year-round, not a day passing by without a cold breeze or hail pelting him in the face. The ground is often too slick to dance on, the air too cold to expose his fiddle to. With too little money and energy to go to a new village, Njord is a prisoner.
It has been two years since he has been truly warm.
His stomach growls.
After a few more moments of tossing and turning, Njord gets up from his mattress and reaches for his paper-thin coat, wrapping it around himself and leaving his house once more. The village is completely silent. All the houses are dark, the lamps off as everyone else slumbers, wrapped in warm quilts and hugging fluffy pillows. He pushes down a twinge of jealousy and continues tramping towards the forest.
He plucks what is left of the blackthorn tree's sloes and pops them into his mouth, the sour berries feeling like a feast to him. Njord clambers up higher and reaches for a sloe at the highest branch of the tree —
The branch snaps and sends him tumbling to the ground.
For a while, Njord lies in the snow, letting cold water soak into his coat and turn his skin numb. Tears trace down his face once again, sending trails of heat down his frozen cheeks. When he struggles to his feet, brushing snow off his coat, the ring of blewits, nestled behind the juniper tree, catches his attention.
He makes his way towards it, senseless from the cold. The moon shines bright and cheerful above him.
Tentatively, Njord looks at the fairy ring, rumoured to be able to take people to the fairy realm, and wonders if it is any warmer on the other side. He takes a deep breath and steps inside.
Nothing happens.
If fairies are watching, they surely want nothing to do with a pathetic, shivering young man. They must be entertained. Positively trembling with the prospect of finally leaving his village, Njord raises his arms and starts to dance.
It is not easy, with his boots crunching in the snow and his clothes still wet. But Njord dances with all the emotion he can muster, careful not to trample any of the mushrooms as he twirls, leaping to the other side of the small ring and spinning again. The forest blurs in his vision. The wind tosses his hair around. It is bliss.
There is no music, but Njord dances on, stepping around on tiptoes and longingly outstretching his arm to the moon, hoping for something, someone to sweep him away, to a place where he can be warm, fed and happy.
The last thing he sees before everything fades to black is the full moon smiling down upon him.
...
It is warm.
When he awakens, he feels like he is floating, cushioned by clouds and tended to by the warm summer breeze, something he has not felt in two years. His eyes open and he sees a ceiling that is painted with creamy white marguerite daisies and swirling angrec in a mesmerising mural of white and gold. As he sits up, he looks around. He appears to be in a bedroom. Its walls are painted with white forget-me-nots, and the shelves and desks made with some pale-coloured wood.
He looks down. He is still in his worn clothing from the village, lying on a pristine white mattress that feels a million times softer than the one he used to have. He runs a hand over the surface and gasps. It is smooth, cool and light. It is unlike anything he has ever touched before.
"You seem surprised."
The voice is coming from next to him. He jolts, whipping his head towards the speaker. There, on an extravagant four-poster bed and lounging atop the beige blankets is a man — no, a fairy — dressed in a vermillion tunic, the golden filigree that is sewn at the hems glimmering from the sunlight shining in from open windows. His breeches are messily rumpled, and what is presumably his coat is tossed across the headboard. A crown, woven from roses so sweet-smelling that he can smell their perfume from his mattress, rests atop an unfastidious halo of corn-silk hair. From his back, a pair of vibrant orange butterfly wings fan out. If the fairy were human, he ought to be the same age as him. He is the brightest, most colourful thing in the room.
"The mattress is made of cotton and stuffed with pigeon feathers," he continues, "it is nothing special."
He neglects to tell the fairy that his mattress in the village was made by stitching together old sacks and stuffed with dead twigs and dried leaves.
The fairy grins, showing pointed teeth, and slides easily off the bed, landing next to him. "Aren't you going to run, human?"
He stares blankly at the fairy.
The fairy strides towards his desk across the room, rummaging for something in the drawers. "Aren't you going to jump up and dash for the door?" He asks, voice melodic and resounding, "or, you know, beg for me to take you back?"
There is nothing for you to bring me back to, he nearly replies. "No," he settles on saying, "I won't try to escape."
"Really?" The fairy pulls out something from the drawer. "You are truly unusual for a human. He makes his way back to the mattress. "What's your name?"
To give a fairy one's name is to give them ultimate control over oneself. "I have no name."
But the fairy, perhaps royalty with his crown and therefore used to getting what he wishes, persists. "What did other people call you?"
For a moment, he feels as though he is back in the village again, lying alone and crying in the cold. "There was nobody to call me anything," he replies.
"That's a pity." The fairy bends down to meet his eyes, knees pressing on the front of the mattress. "How about I give you a new name?" When he nods, the fairy declares, "you've barely reacted since waking up, except to that plain old mattress. Perhaps I shall name you Stellan." He grins jauntily. "It means 'calm'."
A new name for a new life in a new world. Stellan nods again and decides to take a risk. "May I have your name?"
The fairy recoils. Stellan notices that his eyes are a bright, almost too-bright shade of cornflower blue, alight with a gleam of something not quite normal. "Oh, of course you may not. But if you wish, you may call me Henrik." He leans back again, saying, "you're quite the fascinating human. I have never met one who looks so similar to a fairy." Henrik surveys him. "Not the round ears or the lack of wings, of course, but..." His hand stops just a hair away from his cheek. "You have beautiful eyes."
"T-Thank you?" Henrik's hand is so close to his face that he can feel the heat radiating off of it.
Henrik's palm brushes his cheek, fleeting and quick. "May I?"
His heart leaps inexplicably and Stellan nods. His eyes flutter closed as he feels a hand cup his cheek, thumb brushing tenderly at his cheekbones, moving to trace the outline of his eyelids and drag lazily along his jawline. Henrik's touch is warm and caressing, almost like a summer breeze he has not felt for too long. His skin is rough and chapped from two years of living in the dry, cold winter, but the fairy does not seem to mind. Stellan finds himself leaning into the touch, having almost forgotten how it felt to have such lavish attention piled upon him.
"The rest of my court may not take kindly to their King taking in a human." Henrik opens up his other hand, revealing a transparent length of thread with dried red berries dangling down from it. Months of gathering from the woods tell Stellan those are rowan berries. He lowers his head as Henrik helps him put the necklace on. "Keep this on lest my jealous subjects try to enchant you."
He feels the shrivelled berries rest against his collarbone. When another warm breeze blows in from a window by his mattress, Stellan feels the uncontrollable urge to run outside and feel the wind through his hair and the sun on his skin. "Can I go outside?"
Henrik gets up and extends a hand in invitation. "I'll go with you." Holding his hand, he leads him towards the door. "I simply cannot have such a pretty human get lost in my castle."
...
Much like Henrik's bedroom, the castle is painted in muted tones of pale yellow, beige and white. The nobles and servants flitting down the hallway are swathed in bright colours, wings glinting like ice in the sunlight. Stellan dodges a girl with swallowtail wings, stares at a butler with eye-spotted bush-browns flapping at his back, gets knocked to the floor by a banded peacock-winged fairy zipping past.
Flowers, blooming in every shade of the rainbow, twine around the fairies' wrists and ankles, wafting with their intoxicating, heady perfume. Only then does he notice the red camellia, elegant and bold, on Henrik's jacket and right over where his heart ought to be, nearly blending in with his vivid cardinal jacket. Still in his village clothes, Stellan feels like a stone among jewels.
"You were dancing in that fairy ring last night," Henrik says, grip firm and steady, "so you might like this." He walks up a winding staircase, running hands over cool marble railways, and turns right along a corridor with laurel-carved walls. He reaches a door at the end of the corridor and opens it.
Past the door is a studio, with floor-to-ceiling windows that let in sunlight turning crimson from the sunset. The wood floor is smoothed and polished, just waiting to be danced on. On one side of the room, an assortment of instruments is lined up, with fiddles, lyres, and wooden flutes among them. Part of Stellan longs to pick up the fiddle and coax beautiful music from the strings or spin around until he grows dizzy, but he forces himself to stand still at the doorway. Henrik picks up the fiddle he was ogling just seconds ago.
"I saw you dancing your heart out in your wet clothes and empty stomach." He begins tuning the fiddle with practised excellency. "Now that you are here, out of the snow, I want to see you dance again."
Stellan watches Henrik play a few experimental chords, asking, "you really do?"
Henrik nods, gesturing for him to walk onto the dance floor. "I have never seen a human dance the way you did. Now, go on." He smiles. "I shall play something as you do."
Taking a deep breath, he walks, bare feet cold against the floor. With one look at the slowly-descending sun, then at Henrik, face bathed in the warm sunlight, he jumps.
Unlike his village, the air is warm and the sky bright, as he steps around the room (far larger than the fairy ring) on tiptoes, hopping like a skittish bird. From the corner, soft fiddle music plays, exquisite and lively. He spins. The windows, the instruments and Henrik blur past his vision in a psychedelic whirl. When he stops, striking a dramatic pose and staring at the ceiling, he is out of breath, heart pounding and feeling feather-light.
At the corner of the room, Henrik sets down the fiddle and approaches Stellan. "That was beautiful. I could not take my eyes away from you."
"Thank you." Outside the castle, crickets begin to chirp. "Now that night is falling, what are we going to do?"
Henrik glances out the window, where a cloak of navy-blue has blanketed the fairy realm in its inky folds. "Well, I'm supposed to be going for dinner, all alone in my gloomy little dining room." He starts walking towards the door again, beckoning for Stellan to follow. "But instead, let us go to the gardens for our meal."
And they leave, Stellan trailing behind Henrik through labyrinthine corridors and painted doors until Henrik leads them out of the castle. The floor outside is carpeted with lush grass that tickles his feet as he looks around. Verdant bushes line the outside of the garden, juicy berries hang from some of them. Patches of flowers grow around them, and right in front are towering trees. At the very centre, a marble fountain gurgles with water.
Stellan looks around, wondering just why this collection of plants can emit such cloying scents. Henrik hovers upon his wings and picks an apple from a tree, holding it out to Stellan. "Have one."
Once one eats fairy fruit, there is no returning to the human world. Stellan takes the apple, gazing at its smooth scarlet skin, and takes a bite.
The sweetness is so overwhelming that he nearly drops the apple, mouth filled with its crisp, saccharine flesh. Stellan bites into it again, memories of sour, barely-filling berries disappearing from his mind as he polishes off the rest of the apple, leaving only the core behind. He feels fuller than he has been in too long. Henrik takes the core from him and leads him towards another tree. Flapping his wings, Henrik soars up to the highest branch and plucks a large, juicy peach.
He doesn't hesitate this time, biting into the peach and just stopping the syrupy juice from dribbling down his chin. When Stellan finishes, handing the pit to Henrik, he feels as though he is floating, drunk on fairy fruit. He shakes his head when he is offered a blackberry, stomach already full. Instead, he approaches the fountain, listening to the tranquil bubbling of clear water that glitters just so in the moonlight.
He is soon joined by Henrik and decides to look at his reflection instead. The radiant smile and flyaway hair of his companion are easier to look at than his own starved, sunken cheeks, anyway.
"You can drink the water if you want." Henrik cups a hand in the water and scoops some up. "During the daytime, lots of servants come to drink here, too."
The water is warmed from a day under the sun, and when Stellan tips it into his mouth, he tastes honey, sweetened wine; syrup and nectar and sugary tea, a million things that should never taste good together but somehow do, combined in water enchanted by fairy glamour. For all he knows, the water could be muddy and filled with rotting plants, but still he drinks, gazing up at the star-studded sky and feeling giddy.
"Ah, I think that is enough." Henrik finishes off his own array of fruits and sends the pits away with a snap of his fingers. "Overeating the food here can spell trouble for fairy and human alike." He strides towards the door leading back to the castle. "Shall we go to bed?"
Back in the bedroom, the mattress next to his bed has been elevated slightly on a wooden frame, and there are little butterflies carved into the short headboard. Stellan accepts a fluffy towel from Henrik and dips it into the basin of water set next to his bed, wiping his face clean and relishing the cool water. At the corner of his vision, he notices Henrik changing into his nightclothes and looks down, wondering just when he can change out of his rags.
"The servants will bring you a set of new clothes tomorrow," Henrik says, as though he read his mind, "and a pair of new shoes, too."
"Oh, er, thank you," he replies, taken aback.
Henrik only grins and flops down on his bed, yawning loudly. "I'm tired," he announces, "let's go to sleep. Goodnight, Stellan."
He crawls into bed and pulls the thin, velvety blanket over him, laying his head down on the cloud-like pillow. "Goodnight."
...
The next morning, gentle golden rays of sunlight rouse Stellan from a peaceful, dreamless sleep. For a moment, he thinks he is lying on his lumpy mattress back in the human realm, about to be snapped awake from his fantasy by harsh winds threatening to rip his window apart. But somewhere above him, he hears someone yawn. He feels the soft blanket around him and curls back into his mattress with a sigh.
A breeze wafts in and stirs his hair, hitting him in the cheek with a stray leaf. Stellan peels it off with a groan, sits up and feels his blanket fall off from his shoulders. Henrik's bedroom is just as magnificent as he remembered, the ceiling still elegantly carved and the wallpaper painted with blossoms. The mattress of Henrik's grand four-poster bed creaks and he sits up as well, wings flapping languidly. "Mornin'," he mumbles, "how did y'sleep?"
"Very well." He jumps off his bed and stretches, basking in the sunlight streaming in from the perpetually-open window. "And you?"
"Good." Henrik reaches for the clothes neatly laid out at the end of his bed, pulling out a mass of azure fabric. "The servants got this for you." He falls back onto his pillow.
The gown nearly slides out of Stellan's hand when he catches it; the sleek fabric is a stranger to his calloused hands. It is light, almost like spider-silk, and so soft it is as though the softest flower petals were woven to create it. He slips it on and almost sighs at how the satin skirt pools around his legs like water. It fits perfectly. When Stellan reaches up to button the back of the gown, his hands brush over wooden buttons carved with fleur-de-lis.
When he has finished changing, Henrik flits over to Stellan, dressed in a rust-red shirt and still buckling russet breeches. "How do you like your new gown?"
Stellan looks down at his old clothes, sad and abandoned, looking even filthier and torn on the spotless floor. "It's beautiful. Thank you."
Henrik laughs, sounding, perhaps, like the jabber of a sparrow in his mirth. "Those scraps from the other side were anything but fit for someone like you. Now I can see how lovely you really are."
Flushing slightly at the kind comment, Stellan notices the pair of shoes laid down neatly by his bed. "Are these mine, too?"
"That's right!" He grabs his own boots, varnished and beetle-black, and slides them on. "How are they?"
The leather of the delicate white slippers is soft and supple, fitting better than his old boots and feeling twice as strong. Cautiously, he walks towards the door. Nothing pinches his toes. It is as though they were made just for him. "Perfect."
"Then let us go." Dainty-looking wings launch Henrik into the air and he flits towards the door, somehow managing to look elegant. "I'm sure you would hate to miss breakfast."
The dining hall of the castle is just as exquisite as the rest of it. Both the tables and chairs are engraved with butterflies and moths, and a group of fairies dressed in vibrant clothing sit at them. Henrik takes his seat at the end of the table, the back of his chair painted with a black-and-orange monarch butterfly. The chair next to him has what appears to be a blue morpho butterfly painted onto the dark wood. Nobody takes it.
A servant pulls up a smaller chair for Stellan on Henrik's other side. He runs his fingers over the carving of a brimstone butterfly, painted simply in beige and brown. Watching Henrik cheerily greet some of his attendants, he takes his seat and tries not to feel so dreadfully mundane.
As they eat, Stellan looks around the dining hall. Attendants and nobles alike are radiant, swathed in flowers and brilliant wings that flutter in the sunlight. But at the very end, trailing some young maidens, a pair of children catch his eye. There are no flowers twining around their wrists and ankles, nor wings poking out from clothing. Their ears are not pointy, and their eyes do not have that wild gleam in them. Like him, they are ordinary, regular, human.
"Believe it or not, there are a few children out there as peculiar as you, and wish to escape their world," Henrik says, noticing his fascination, "and there are some humans who are willing to be employed as servants or entertainers. You, however, are none of them." He winks. "You are simply my friend."
His friend. Strangely, the words send joy spreading through Stellan's chest. "That I would gladly be," he proclaims. The warmth that radiates from Henrik envelopes him like a kind embrace.
"I may be King to my folk," Henrik agrees, "but for you, I will be one thing and one thing only, and that is your companion."
...
The days pass by quickly, as though Stellan is in a dream he knows he never has to awake from. The castle seems to be in an eternal summer, every day just as warm as the one before and the sun anointing the lands with its golden light before it sets and the moon rises to grace the night sky with its presence. The grass is always lush and the water cool, nothing barren nor dying. Every fruit, every berry, regardless of size, is a feast.
After another dinner in the castle gardens, he taps Henrik on the shoulder. "Henrik?"
He turns around. "Hm?"
"Everything here will last for centuries, right?" Stellan gestures to the bushes and trees around them. "Even you."
"Precisely."
"What about me? In the human realm, I would be turning nineteen in four months, during what we call May." He pops a blueberry in his mouth, savouring its tart sweetness. "Would that be the same here?"
Henrik considers the question for a moment, taking another bite out of his apple. "It depends, really," he says slowly, "on how long you stay here. I reckon any other human would only be here for a week before leaving home, soon enough that nothing would happen. You, on the other hand..." he makes the apple core vanish with a snap of his fingers. "You have been here for a month. If you stay the way you are, you will age, but far slower than a human on the other side."
Stellan tilts his head, watching as Henrik's wings quiver in the breeze. They are feeble but so strong at the same time. "'If I stay the way I am'?" He repeats, "what do you mean?"
"If you stay human." He tosses his head back to look at the sky, one hand keeping his crown from falling off. "If I were to make you one of us, you would age like the rest of the realm of the fair folk. You would live for hundreds and hundreds of years."
Rather unusually, Stellan begins imagining himself as a fairy, one with majestic wings that can launch him into the air, flowers he can bend at his will and magic that he can use to achieve unfathomable things. Excitement, exhilarating and thrilling, rushes through his veins like a bolt of lightning. Thoroughly confused, he clamps the feeling down.
"Don't worry." Henrik flutters in a circle around him, gossamery wings tickling his skin. "You have many more years with me before your time will come."
Somehow, the thought reassures him.
...
At first, the night passes like every other. Stellan bids Henrik goodnight, curls up in his soft, luxurious bed and drifts off to the world of sleep. But then he opens his eyes.
He is dreaming.
He is still lying down, gazing up at the starry night sky instead of the ceiling. Strangely, the air is cold, and the wind shrieks above him. Dirt skitters down from somewhere and lands on his face.
Grimacing, he attempts to raise a hand to wipe his face clean before discovering that he cannot. His arms are firmly pinned to his sides, and when more dirt falls onto his face, he realises that he is being buried.
He thrashes, mouth open in a scream that he cannot hear. Piles upon piles of dirt, cold and wet, fall onto him, accumulating in their deluge until it weighs him down. He screams again. Nothing comes out.
Henrik is the first person who comes to his mind. He calls his name, imagines his face and his smile and his hands, gasping for air as the dirt continues to fall. Nobody comes to his rescue, of course, for what immortal fairy would rescue a mere human? With what little energy he has left, he cranes his neck to see who is sealing him in his grave.
A clump of dirt falls and blinds him, covering his mouth and nose and making him choke. Black fills his eyes. His vision ebbs as he frantically struggles for life.
Stellan's eyes fly open. He sits up, heart in his throat. Henrik stirs next to him.
He looks around. The room is dark and not as breathtaking as its daytime state, dulled by the night. Stellan's vision adjusts and, almost instinctively, he looks over to Henrik. As though he has sensed his presence, he awakes and his wings flit, glowing a soft orange. "What's it?" He slurs sleepily, "why're ya up?"
"I, er, just snapped awake."
Henrik rolls out of bed, landing unceremoniously on his rear on the floor. "All right." He climbs lazily onto his bed and sits down next to him. "I heard ya. You were, uh, erm..." he stares off into the distance. "What's th'word? Cryin', I think. Or gaspin', or something-or-other."
For some strange reason, it is almost endearing to see Henrik bleary and half-awake, free from fancy words and royal responsibilities. The room somehow grows even warmer when Henrik nudges him, the silken sleeve of his nightshirt brushing against his bare arm. "C'mon, you can tell me. I want you t'sleep well."
Thoughts of his nightmare fly back to him and he suddenly feels cold again. " I had a dream," he begins softly, "that I was being buried alive. I could not move, nor speak, nor breathe. I thought - I thought I was going to die." Growing light-headed again, Stellan doesn't resist when Henrik pulls him closer and lets him rest his head against his shoulder.
"You won't die." Henrik wraps an arm around him. "Not any time soon. I would take on Death himself to keep you alive." His left wing, as gentle as a leaf descending from its branch, beats steadily against Stellan's side. "I promise."
"You'd really go such lengths so I can live?"
"I promise," he says firmly, "and you should know that the fair folk never break their promises. Now — " he squeezes his shoulders one last time before returning to his own bed — "I'm off to sleep again. Wake me up if something else happens. Goodnight."
Heart fluttering as quickly as fairy wings, Stellan watches as Henrik, kind, beautiful Henrik, disappears under his quilt and begins to snore. And, wondering just how his twisted, lonely heart made him fall in love with the fairy king, he sinks back down into his soft bed and drifts off to sleep.
...
As grand and beautiful the castle is, Stellan finds himself growing bored of it. The hills beyond the castle grounds draw him in, along with the barely-visible roofs that house the common fair folk. They are far more enticing than the gilded windows and polished chandeliers of the court.
One lazy afternoon, Stellan interrupts Henrik while he is tuning his fiddle. "I want to go outside," he says.
He looks up, plucking idly at the fiddle's strings. "You mean, outside the castle?"
"Yes."
"All right, then." Henrik stands up and sets his fiddle on the chair. He reaches for his coat. "Shall we go to the stables?"
Taken aback, Stellan very eloquently blurts out, "what?"
Henrik turns, asking, "what is it?"
"I never thought you would say yes, that's all." Stellan tugs at the skirt of his gown sheepishly. "Some say that the fairies will only keep their humans inside the castle."
"They must also say that the fairies make their humans dance until they fall down dead." He laughs, idly playing with Stellan's hair. "But you must know by now that my court is different. We're nothing like how fairies are depicted in stories." And with that said, Henrik buttons up his coat and marches out of his bedroom. "Now, let's go!"
Stellan follows him through already-familiar hallways and down the staircase into the stables. His eyes widen at the surreal sight of enormous dragonflies with their iridescent wings and beady, jewel-like eyes. Henrik chooses a beautiful demoiselle, its teal wings shimmering in the sunlight. He hops onto its back as effortlessly as one might a horse, beckoning for Stellan to follow suit.
He climbs onto the demoiselle's stick-thin back behind Henrik, instinctively reaching up to hold on to his shoulders for support. "Won't we fall off once he starts flying?" "Of course not!" Henrik reaches back and moves Stellan's hands so that they wind around his waist. "Just hold on tight."
Before his position can sink in, the demoiselle takes off flying out of the stables.
As swift as light, they dash out of the castle and out to the fairy realm. The rigid scales of the demoiselle dig into his legs as he holds on to Henrik for dear life. Just barely managing not to scream, he presses his cheek against Henrik's back and feels the wind, cool and quick and free, soaring past him.
When he sees bricks instead of trees and roofs instead of leaves, the demoiselle slows to a stop and hovers, bobbing up and down with its thin legs occasionally brushing the cobblestone paths. Henrik jumps off, hair a wind-tossed mess. "Oh, I've nearly forgotten how fun it is to ride a dragonfly!"
Head spinning, knees trembling, Stellan half-falls off the demoiselle and stumbles into Henrik's waiting arms. "Why don't you fairies just fly?"
"Not all of us are fast enough." Releasing Stellan (internally, he protests the action), his wings flap wildly. He sweeps his hand out at the village. "It's surprising, really, how many fairies have dropped dead from exhaustion after flying for too long. But anyhow, welcome to Rosenmont!"
Rosenmont, with its stout little cottages and narrow paths, is as charming as the castle. Henrik leads Stellan through winding paths, through lush orchards growing fairy fruit and past houses that overflow with music like siren-song and tinkling laughter. The few fairies he sees ignore him and Henrik completely, busy tending to their houseplants or magicking dust away from their doorways.
"Why aren't any of the fairies greeting you?" Stellan remarks as they pass a fairy with silvery-blue wings, "if a king were to visit a village, wouldn't everyone who lived there be terribly excited?"
Henrik shrugs. "I've been coming to Rosenmont since I was a prince. Some fairies here have known me for hundreds of years. They do not see me as anything special."
From a house, Stellan hears an explosion of laughter, and almost immediately afterwards, a cloud floats to block out the sun. Golden light yields to ash-coloured shadows, and cool breezes, freezing in the eternal summer of the realm, send dust swirling up from the ground. Goosebumps rise up on Stellan's arms. Cursing himself for not borrowing one of Henrik's cloaks, he rubs at his arms and, as the laughter inside the house only grows in volume, shudders.
And while he shivers, suddenly feeling so vulnerable under the loss of light and raucous laughter, the most peculiar sound emerges from another nearby house. He recognises it immediately; it is that of someone playing the fiddle. The melody is painfully nostalgic, sweet to the point of melancholic, unlike the tunes that are normally played in the fairy realm.
It reminds him of the other side.
Eerily observant, Henrik notices his frown. "Are you thinking of the human realm?"
"Yes."
"And you want to forget about it, don't you?"
"Yes."
"It must be because we're on the ground."
He turns to Henrik. "Huh?"
He grins, gesturing to the sky. "How about this? I'll take you up to the sky, where you can see things that can never, ever be seen where you came from. We can fly all over Rosenmont, and the winds will blow away every memory you had of the human world."
For a moment, Stellan thinks that the sun's clouding-over has blurred Henrik's senses as well. "I can't fly."
"Of course you can! With magic, I can have you soaring over the land as though you have wings." He points at the necklace of rowan berries around Stellan's neck. "But first, you'll have to take that off."
He hesitates, one hand ready to untie the thread's knot. Taking off the rowan berries would leave him vulnerable to the magic and glamour of the fairy realm, could turn him into the enchanted, glossy-eyed puppets that humans believe fairies like to create. Stellan looks at Henrik, his vivid, manic eyes shining in invitation, and his excited smile, and takes the necklace off.
The necklace disappears the moment it leaves his neck. Next to him, Henrik closes his eyes. He is silent, almost terrifyingly so. But when the breezes turn warm again, Stellan realises why.
His feet leave the ground, and Stellan finds himself floating, higher and higher until he drifts farther up than the roofs. A few moments later, Henrik follows, flapping his wings and still murmuring under his breath. But when he reaches him, he asks, "ready to fly?"
Apparently, his amazed expression is the only answer he needs, for in a blink of an eye, Stellan begins to move forward. He shifts his position to resemble Henrik's, relishing the wind tossing his hair around and the warm sunlight on his back.
Then he looks down.
Rosenmont looks like a painting, idyllic and tranquil, trees minuscule blotches of green. He can barely see the fairies living there, all of them appearing as tiny as dolls. A distance away, the castle stands tall and majestic, silver turrets and polished buttresses gleaming in the sunlight.
Somewhere behind him, Stellan can hear the beat of Henrik's butterfly wings, and all around him is the lively whistle of the wind. He feels weightless, lost to the exhilaration of flying without really flying, and laughs out loud as Henrik has him dip lower and swoop over a tree, so low that his slippers brush over the leaves, before soaring up again.
They begin to fly back to Rosenmont, soaring over patches of trees again and propelling through clouds. All the while, Stellan cannot keep laughter from bubbling out his lips.
But then, mere seconds from the village, somehow, he falls.
The ground grows larger before his eyes. Trees blur past him, the whistle of the wind turns into screams. Scared into silence, he stares, too horrified to move nor look at anything apart from the ground. He curses his idiocy, curses his illogical, affection-addled decision to allow a fairy to enchant him. He misses the loop of rowan berries around his neck, keeping him safe from fairies he should have known not to trust.
He descends, down, down, down, falling faster than he can process. The chill of the wind freezes him as it shoots him toward his demise. His eyes water, both from the wind and from the horror of being tricked.
The ground nears. He closes his eyes and awaits death.
Strong, steady arms wrap around his waist when the ground feels but a hair away. His eyes flutter open.
Ascending again, Henrik leans down to whisper, "did you really think I'd leave you to die?" His torso is pressed against his back, warm, heavy and so, so reassuring. "I promised that I'd never do that."
Finally catching his breath and basking in Henrik's warmth, Stellan murmurs, "what happened?"
Rosenmont emerges in the distance. "I never was very good at magic," Henrik admits, "and I lost concentration for a moment. Apparently, that was all it took to drop you. I'm sorry." He tightens his grip and quietly adds, "you must've been so scared."
His slippers land on rough-hewn stone, and Stellan takes a while to regain his balance. He feels dizzy from his flight. Lightly, Henrik lands in front of him and places his hands on his shoulders. "How do you feel?"
"Better, now that I'm not plunging to my death." He steps closer and stares up at Henrik. "I never thought you would save me."
"I told you, all those weeks ago, that I would fight Death to keep you by my side." Henrik leans down, so close that their noses touch. Stellan can see the freckles splashed across his face. "I don't think I could handle losing you."
Whatever he tries to say gets stuck in his throat. He finds himself lost in Henrik's eyes, the shade of the bright summer sky. He cannot speak.
"How about you?" Somehow, for Stellan did not think it possible, he closes the already-narrow distance between the two of them. Their lips are almost touching — it is practically an invitation for a kiss. "If I were to leave, what would you do?"
A shudder, thrilling, riveting and perhaps even enchanting, ripples throughout Stellan. He clears his throat, but his voice is still hoarse with emotion when he speaks. "I don't know," he replies, "because wherever you go, I will follow along."
Right after answering, like he is possessed by the spirit of someone lovelier, more romantic and far bolder, Stellan teeters up on his tiptoes and kisses him.
Henrik's lips taste even sweeter, even more addicting than fairy fruit. They bring the scorching intensity of the summer sun, the chill of fountain water; they are softer and gentler than feathers. And though Stellan closes his eyes, stars explode before his vision as he sways, pure, untouched adoration igniting in the very depths of his heart.
Stellan opens his eyes. It seems that all but Henrik has disappeared from his view and there is nothing else he can focus on, except the touch of his lips.
The sight of Henrik, after he pulls away, flustered and red-faced and devoid of his usual winning charisma is nearly amusing. Once again out of breath, he tentatively reaches out to cup Henrik's cheek, as he did to him when they first met. Henrik seems to flush even deeper. "I — " he stammers, "I, er, well." He coughs. "Yes. Do — do you mean it? Do you, um, really, y'know, want to stay with me?"
It feels nice to be the one with charming words this time. "I meant every word."
With a little gasp, Henrik grabs Stellan and cradles him to his chest, laughing joyously. Arms once again 'round his waist, he spins them around and around, laughing still, and Stellan cannot help smiling along. It seems dream-like, fantastical — he has fallen in love with the fairy king, and the king loves him right back.
When they both grow dizzy from their spinning, minds hazy with love and laughter, they stumble back to Rosenmont's square, where the demoiselle awaits. Henrik barely manages to keep from tripping over his feet and mounts the dragonfly. Stellan hops on behind him.
They return to the castle just as the sun begins its descent over the horizon.
...
After another dinner of fairy fruit and a bath spent in a crystal-clear pond, they return to Henrik's chambers. The first thing Stellan notices is that only his bed has its sheets turned out, ready for him to sleep in. The larger bed still has its sheets tightly tucked into the frame, untouched from that morning.
"Should I go get a servant?" He asks, gesturing at the bed.
"No need for that!" Henrik flops on his bed, having recovered his old allure after their kiss. "We can share."
"Share?" Stellan repeats, "but the bed isn't big enough."
"We can stick closer together, then." Henrik peeks slyly at him. "Unless you don't want to — "
Before Henrik can say more, Stellan crawls into bed with him, nudging him towards the edge of the bed. He yanks the blankets toward himself. Henrik yelps in indignation and tries to reclaim his half of the blankets. "Hey!"
Stellan pulls harder, unable to suppress a smile.
Henrik thrashes, half-laughing, half-whining, "wha — no — give me the blanket, I am your king!"
"I'm your lover!" He counters. Apparently, that is enough to keep him from taking the blanket, and Henrik releases it. "I'll get the blanket and you can sleep without it."
He huffs when the blanket, once again, is tugged away, and Henrik wraps it around them both. "We need to share." He pulls Stellan flush against his chest and kisses his forehead. "Now, goodnight."
The perpetual warmth that comes from him is making Stellan drowsy, and he presses himself against his lover, already feeling his eyelids droop. "G'night."
They curl up against each other, a sun-warmed fairy holding a shivering human. Warm in Henrik's embrace, he closes his eyes and drifts off to sleep.
...
The morning after that, and the mornings after, all seem to pass by in a daze. Stellan decides to count every day after it, for no reason in particular but to record every joyful memory he has of Henrik — that being all of them — so that he will never forget.
On their second day together, Henrik begins holding his hand boldly, unabashedly, in front of all his court. He even dares to lace their fingers together when one of his advisors sneers at them. On their thirteenth, Stellan begins attending every royal meeting with Henrik, meeting the other folk of the realm. On the twenty-ninth, right after a conference with what appears to be a particularly strong fair court, Henrik takes his hands and kisses him in front of everyone.
The fortieth day sees an elaborate ball during a full moon, and as an enchanted orchestra plays at the corner of the castle's grand ballroom, they dance, awkward and inexperienced but happy all the same. Through a slow, lumbering waltz, a lively foxtrot and a dizzying rondo, hand-in-hand they remain. During the final dance, arms around each others' waists, they bow to the nobles' applause.
On the sixty-eighth, Henrik worms his way into Stellan's bed again, and they burst two pillows fighting each other before falling asleep, tired out from laughing and nestled in a mattress of scattered feathers.
The eighty-first day, Stellan watches as Henrik gets into an argument with one of his advisors. He slams his hands on the table as he seethes, blood-red camellias snaking from their perch on his wrist onto the table and threatening to choke the varnished wood. In shock and panic, Stellan yanks at one of the woody stems and nearly snaps it in half. Henrik pauses in his shouting, staring down at the bent stem, and sits down. He apologises for his brashness with a kiss to the forehead, along with a promise of, "I'll control my temper."
The advisor riles Henrik up again during a conference on the ninety-fifth day. Staying true to his promise, Henrik remains seated, the flowers under his bidding perfectly still. Stellan keeps one hand resting on Henrik's wrist, the other wrapped around his waist where everyone in the room can see it. After the meeting, after the court has filed out, Stellan perches on his lap and kisses him. He runs his fingers through his lover's flyaway hair, murmuring incoherent, lovey-dovey praises against his forehead. He can barely understand himself.
Henrik laughs, holding him tenderly as though he were the fairy court's most-valued treasure. "Your rambling is music to my ears," he says, "and as I vowed to learn to control myself, I will vow also to love your voice for all eternity."
...
Stellan counts one hundred days of consistent happiness before something changes. When he and Henrik retire to their chambers on the hundredth night, he realises that his bed is gone. There is only the floor, polished and devoid of dust, where it used to be.
He nudges at Henrik, who has already begun to change into his nightclothes. "My bed's gone."
Henrik shrugs off his jacket and reaches for his nightshirt. "I know."
"Will I have to sleep on the floor?"
"Of course not!" He exclaims, horrified.
Rolling his eyes a little, Stellan asks, "where will I sleep, then?"
"With me. In my bed." He does not miss the little quiver in his voice. "Come to bed with me, if you wish."
He has no doubts as he crawls into bed with his lover, sinking into the impossibly-soft mattress. Stellan lies on his back, staring up at the beautifully-painted ceiling he has yet to get used to. A creak signifies Henrik's joining, and soon his grinning face crowds in his vision, gradually learning down for a heated, breathtaking kiss.
One kiss turns into two, then four, then eight, and after that, Stellan can no longer keep track of where nor how many times Henrik has pressed his lips over him. Petal-soft touches over every inch of him cause him to sigh; touches that he returns with shaking hands coax exclamations of pleasure from Henrik as well. Both of them are trembling, hesitant with the shyness of springtime lovers, lost in each other's embrace.
Timeless moments later, when they both are spent and sated, they collapse onto the mattress, delirious smiles stretching their kiss-bitten lips. Stellan rests his head on Henrik's chest, made sleepy and placid by the pioneer of such a bold declaration of love. "You seemed nervous," he slurs, "just now."
"I was." He lolls his head back, allowing him to tuck his head under his chin. "I have never done anything like that before."
"Not in your who-knows-how-many years of existence?"
"Not once." Henrik smiles, his eyes blemished with just a glimpse of sadness. "But that can be a conversation for another day. Goodnight, my love."
Choosing to ignore what appears to be a tear glistening at the corner of Henrik's eye, Stellan kisses him once more, a swift peck on the cheek, and closes his eyes.
...
Like the one hundred days before their coupling, the one hundred days after it goes by in a blur for Stellan. That is, until one morning when Henrik shakes him awake. A look outside the window shows that it is barely dawn. Stellan's vision is blurry with sleepiness as he garbles, "why're we awake?"
"It's my birthday!" Henrik is even more energetic than usual, pulling on his jewelled clothes with uncanny speed and bobbing up and down. "The first of many we will celebrate together, I am sure."
"Oh." Stellan blinks down at the gown Henrik drops in his lap. "Happy birthday." He rubs his eyes. "Can we go back to sleep?"
"Nope." He pulls on his own jacket, reaching for his crown woven from thornless, undying roses. "We have to do something important."
"At the crack of dawn?"
"Correct." Henrik balances the crown delicately on his head, admiring his reflection in the mirror by his bed. "This is the only time we can do it."
Grumbling under his breath, Stellan pulls on his gown and follows Henrik out of his chambers, the marble floor cold against his bare feet. A few servants bow to them in the corridors, but other than them, the castle is empty. Stellan recognises the path they take and follows Henrik, arm looped with his, into the gardens.
The gardens are as beautiful as they were when Stellan first saw them, serene under the rising sun. Henrik kisses him on the forehead before rushing back into the castle, calling out, "I need to get something!"
Stellan pops a few cloudberries into his mouth and sits at the enchanted fountain. The clear, gurgling water shows his face. He touches the surface, watching as his image distorts with the ripples that bounce through the water. The dawn-light paints his hair from white-blond to gold. He cups his hand into the cool water, yet to be warmed by the sun, and drinks. After so many months of fairy food, it no longer intoxicates him.
Henrik returns a few moments later, holding something in his hands. "Close your eyes," he instructs.
He does so and feels something cool rest on his brow. Stellan opens his eyes, and one hand raises to touch what's on his head. It appears to be a garland of flowers, and his reflection in the fountain's water shows that it is woven out of blue salvia flowers. "Is this a part of... whatever you want to do?" He asks.
Henrik nods, tugging Stellan up and squeezing his hand. "Maybe I should tell you what I am planning." He takes a deep breath and looks almost tense as he says, "I have been the king of my court for decades, and the prince for even longer than that. All the while, I have befriended so many. I remember all the elves, goblins, merfolk and humans I've been friends with." He gazes right at Stellan, eyes deadly serious. "I loved none of them."
He takes a moment to process what he has said, before saying quietly, "until me?"
"Yes, until you." Henrik smiles and touches the crown on his head. "It is rare for a fairy, especially a noble one, to be lonely. People thought I would marry, or at least fall in love, soon after taking the throne." He coughs. "I didn't. I felt so... so alone. Even when holding revels or visiting the human world, I felt nothing."
"Until me?" Stellan dares to ask again.
He nods. "When my attendants first took you to the castle, I thought you would be like the other humans they took, that it would only be an hour or so before you left." Henrik blinks rapidly, rubbing at his eyes. "But I was wrong. You were the first, out of all those I've met, who I fell in love with. And I cannot imagine ever parting with you."
"Neither can I."
"I want to stay with you, for as long as I live," Henrik breathes, "and I must know if you feel the same."
Just as he nods, Stellan remembers what he heard when he first arrived at the fairy realm. If I were to make you one of us, you would age like the rest of the fairy world. "Will you make me one of your kind, then?"
Tears slip down Henrik's rosy cheeks. He hurriedly wipes them away. "Yes," he whispers. One quivering hand points to the salvia garland on his head. "That — That belonged to my mother, the fairy queen. If I change you, you will be ruling alongside me."
"Go on, then." Stellan bows his head, feeling the garland slip a little. "I'd like nothing more than to be with you forever."
No sooner than after that, he feels Henrik's fingers tracing between his shoulder blades, sending tingles shooting through him. Whispers sound, in a language Stellan is yet to understand, resembling the rustle of breezes through leaves, faster and faster, growing in intensity until the garden disappears and everything fades to black.
When Stellan opens his eyes, his vision is flooded with light. He feels warm, almost uncomfortably so. Something moves behind him.
He turns.
Lo, and there on his back, poking out from his gown, are a pair of wings, magnificent and glimmering. They flap, once, twice, lifting Stellan up from the ground, and he sees their colours, blue and brown and blue again as they flutter. They are the wings of the blue morpho butterfly, an exact replica of the ones carved into what is meant to be the fairy queen's chairs around the castle.
Blue hyacinth flowers twine around his forearms and ankles, one sprig growing to rest over his heart. Henrik flies up to meet him, taking his hands. The camellia over his heart is blooming brighter than ever.
"My love." Henrik pulls him close and takes his hand, sighing, "You're beautiful."
"I am glad you think so," Stellan jests, "for you will have to look at this face forever."
"Oh, of course." He smiles, bringing their foreheads together. Their crowns, woven with the blossoms of crimson love against azure remembrance, bump against each other. "I could never get tired of it. So," Henrik says, lacing their fingers together, "shall we share one kiss? You know, for our eternity?"
"Just one." Stellan kisses him, as sweetly and lovingly as their first. "For our eternity."