Tales after Dusk 03

As they finally stop for the night, the dwarfs are worn out. Finley takes charge of building a fire and starting supper, the ladies sitting quietly around the spit, waiting patiently. Daphne tends to the horse, letting him loose as she knows he will abide by her and return in the morning. When she is done, she doesn't join the group but instead sits against a tree, staring at the foot of Winter's coffin.

The dwarfs, having both hatred and pity towards her, let her be. They do their best to ignore the nymph but when supper is finished, it is Lainey who slinks over, hands extended with a plate of food.

"You should eat," she says quietly.

Daphne barely shakes her head no, offering up no other response while she continues to stare at the coffin.

Lainey tries a few more times, before finally giving up and setting the plate down next to her.

The sun slowly sets, casting a soft glow on the forest, leaving a mildly warm spring night in its wake. Gay pulls out a small mandolin, softly strumming and singing to herself. Though she tries to play upbeat and happy songs, the sorrow in her heart is reflected in the tone of her voice and everything sounds ironically sad.

It is her who spots them first, her fingers immediately pressing against the strings to silence them.

"What's the matter?" Finley scrambles to get up, drawing a knife from his belt.

"Look," Luna says softly.

Though in the distance they might be mistaken for the glow of a firefly, up close they are larger. They float out of the forest trees, several dozen tiny sylvans of many different colors. All freeze, terrified yet awestruck at the mystical sight.

Several land on the cart and the edge of the coffin, staring solemnly at Winter's corpse. A few float close to Daphne, landing in the grass near her. One tiny orange one picks up a piece of stew meat off of the plate before landing on Daphne's arm. She holds it out to the giant sylvan, trying to get her to eat.

Daphne shakes her head but when the persistent sylvan tries again, a large hand gently swats her away. She lands gracefully at Daphne's feet, where she sits for the remainder of the night.

Though the rest of the procession is slightly unnerved at the vast amount of sylvans in their camp, Davina assures them that there is no threat; the nymphs have come to be with their High Priestess in her time of need.

The next three days continue the same way; the procession walks all day, camping at night. Daphne doesn't eat or even talk to anyone else but rather spends her time with Winter. At night she climbs up into the back of the cart and sleeps with her torso draped over the top of his coffin. As each day progresses, more and more tiny sylvans join the group, riding on the back of the large horse or cart edges; none speak to the dwarfs or the human but talk quietly amongst themselves. All traces of winter have vanished, the forest sprouting into various shades of green. The group is amazed that Daphne can manage so well without having food for days; though her body is weak it is the emptiness of her heart that eats away at her and keeps her moving.

On the afternoon of the fourth day, Daphne stops in her tracks; the horse behind her halts immediately, whinnying at her back. The seven dwarfs look up confused but Finley speaks for all of them, "Why have we stopped?"

"We are surrounded by sylvans," Daphne speaks for the first time in days.

"Yeah, well if you haven't noticed, that's nothing new," he replies shortly.

"Uh, actually it is," Mildred says. They all look around; each tiny little nymph has disappeared, leaving them alone, yet they each feel a sinking feeling in their gut like they are being watched.

Finley looks around, seeing nothing but the forest surrounding them. It isn't until the slightest of movements in front of Daphne, that he finally understand what she means. Almost perfectly blended into the shadows, a full sized armed sylvan steps forward. He is a large, handsome creature with features resembling Daphne's but he is covered from neck to toe in golden armor. Massive brown wings extend from his back; they flutter a little when he bows.

"High Priestess, we are glad you have returned," as he rises, he rests one end of his bow on the ground, motioning to the trees. A dozen or so matching sylvans lower their weapons, giving away their tightly formed position around the group.

"Hello Adras. I trust you know why I am here."

"Yes, my lady but I am afraid I cannot allow it."

Daphne stiffens a little, her voice quiet but hostile, "I understand that my choice is not within our tradition but I was led to believe that I was the last remaining sylvan. While I am responsible for his death, he is my mate regardless of if he is human or not and I intend to be buried with him in the forest."

The threat in her voice causes one of the guards to raise his bow again, arrow tentatively aimed at her. Immediately Adras raises his, arrow pointed at the creature's heart, "Lower your weapon soldier, or I will lower it for you."

The confused guard quickly lowers his bow, followed by Adras. He turns back to Daphne, "You misunderstood me, High Priestess. My issue is not with your mate being human, my issue is that you are the only remaining sylvan of the royal bloodline and the High Priestess to boot. I cannot allow you to take your own life and leave our people without a leader."

Daphne's knees teeter a bit before they buckle from weakness. She rests her hands on the ground, breathing slowly. Finley rushes to her side, setting his hand on her shoulder to make sure she is all right, "You are the sylvan Princess?" he whispers.

Adras takes a knee in front of her, responding to the human, "No, now she is the Queen and High Priestess, something that has never before occurred."

Daphne squeezes her eyes shut, steadying the world around her, "I am none of these things. I cannot be the High Priestess—I wasn't able to protect the Spirit. I couldn't even protect my own parents. I am nothing—I have destroyed and defiled all that we hold sacred and I deserve to be punished for it. I beg you, please, end my suffering."

"You are not nothing, my lady, you are all we have. Who will protect us from the dark wizard once he returns?"

"Anyone will do a better job than I have," she puts her hand on Finley's arm, he helps her up, "all I wish is to be with my mate." Her heart aches at what she has ruined; she can bare it no more. Once Finley has got her on her feet, her slender fingers wrap around the knife in his belt. She summons all of her strength and pushes him away before leaping to slap the horse on the hindquarters. It rears up and takes off, causing a commotion. Before anyone knows what is happening, Daphne grasps the knife with both hands, raising it in front of her before swiftly plunging it into her chest. She welcomes physical pain of death as a relief to her sorrow; she crumples down onto the ground as the world begins to grow dark. The last thing she sees is the horse narrowly missing a tree but breaking the cart against the trunk. It causes Winter's coffin to jolt out of the back and into the grass.

Everything goes black.

...

To her dismay, Daphne opens her eyes. She sees the amber colored wooden ceiling of the royal bedroom. Her heart aches but not because of the knife wound that narrowly missed it. Upon seeing her awake, the sylvan nurse smiles tightly at her before scurrying out of the room. Soon, Adras arrives at her bedside.

"High Priestess Queen Daphne, I am relieved to see that you are awake," he bows.

"Why did you save me?" She croaks, resting the back of her hand on her eyes so that he doesn't see her tears fall.

"I had no choice," he says softly, "the Spirit is not dead." She removes her hand, harshly looking at him. He continues, "One of the elders looked into the scrolls of the past; our folklore says that in order to kill the Spirit of the Forest, one must eliminate both the tree and the High Priestess in order to accomplish the task. As you remained alive, the tree sprouted a new branch; it will flower soon."

Daphne returns her gaze to the ceiling. She feels some relief that soon life for the sylvans will return to normal, though she still feels the guilt of shame at not being able to protect the Spirit, "Then after it blooms, I will join my mate in the grave."

Adras smiles, squeezing her shoulder a little. He turns and walks away while speaking to her, "I do not think that our King will allow it." He opens the door.

Winter walks in.

There is some restraint in his quick steps. He quickly makes his way to her bedside, sitting next to her; slowly he reaches forward, cradling her cheek in his hand.

Daphne doesn't believe her eyes. Though the sorrow and emptiness of her heart quickly vanishes, she finds herself wondering what cruel trick this is. She is so confused and full of disbelief, that she offers him no smile, no expression.

Winter slowly leans in, gently pressing his lips to hers. The warmth and sincerity they convey melt her frigid affect. Tears fall from her eyes and Adras sees himself out.

"I don't understand," she chokes out, "I killed you. You were dead. I am so sorry." Daphne forces back sobs.

Winter wipes away her tears, holding her hands tight. He finds himself nervous around her despite it all, "The last thing I remember thinking was how to tell you how I felt. I was going to get some more tea, but I was hungry so I ate the apple. Then I woke up in the forest, in a coffin, surrounded by sylvan soldiers, the dwarfs and you—you were dying, on the ground, right in front of me," he raises her hands to his lips, kissing the backs of them. "I ran to you and cradled you in my arms and I told you that you couldn't die because I loved you. We rushed you back here and they healed you. Adras said that you would live—but I didn't believe him. He insisted because you chose me as your mate, you could never do anything to hurt me. Since I was there when you stabbed yourself and I forbade you from dying, you wouldn't."

"But you were dead."

"The poisoned apple lodged in my throat. When the cart crashed into the tree, it jarred it loose. Flo told me everything, I am so sorry that you had to go through all of it, because of me."

Daphne wraps her arms around Winter, pulling him close so that she can breathe him in, his comforting scent filling her lungs, assuring herself that he is in fact real, "But what about the King? Once he finds out you are alive, he will stop at nothing to see to it that you remain dead the next time."

"You figured that out?" He says quietly.

"Your mother—the way you described her; I saw her once, when I was a prisoner."

Winter swallows hard, "It won't take long before he realizes I am alive—then he will stop at nothing. Adras tightened the security; he asked if he could pull sylvans out of the forest, to return to full size to protect the fortress," he leans back, somewhat embarrassed. "He kept asking me if it was all right. He said that while you were incapacitated, I had to make all of the decisions. I wasn't quite sure what to say, or do, or even think. I'm not quite sure I'm cut out to be a ruler; I figured he wouldn't have bothered asking if it weren't a good idea, so I agreed. I hope that I didn't overstep my bounds." He shifts uncomfortably.

Daphne appraises him for a moment, confused about his affect; it takes her a bit to realize that for him, they have only spent a few hours together, while for her it has been almost a week that she spent watching over him. She sits up slowly; the pain in her chest hardly fazes her after the torment she suffered over her seemingly lost love. Winter dots over her, worried that she will hurt herself. Daphne reaches up and cradles his face.

"I have complete faith in your decisions. I have chosen you to be mine and for me there will be none other. I have to apologize for doing it—I don't know how it is for you, since you are human but you will always still have the choice to choose someone else. It truly wasn't fair of me to do so without consulting you and forcing it upon you when you thought you had no choice."

Winter looks sincerely into her eyes, "You are my first, and you will be my last and only." He melts into her lips.

...

Winter helps her climb into the tub. Daphne's wound has healed well enough to stand without a bandage, though the neat little stitches appear angry against her skin. He washes her hair while she slowly lathers up her skin; though Winter knows that he belongs to her, just as she does to him, his heart pounds violently with nerves. He tries to fill her in of the occurrences of the past few days.

"Adras has armed guards flying overhead; after he made sure there was no possible way that the fortress could be penetrated, he sent a few tiny ones to the King's castle to spy on him. They reported back that he asked his mirror, 'Who is the most handsome man, in all the land?' The mirror replied, 'The wizard King is a fine specimen, but to the newly crowned sylvan King you can't contend.' Since then, he has repeatedly sent small attack squads to the forest. None have penetrated but I fear that he is just putting us on edge until he can assault with a full on army. I think he knows it is me."

Daphne slowly rises from the tub, gratefully taking Winter's arm to steady herself. As he helps her dress, she replies, "He doesn't know you are the King, because he didn't know I was the Princess when he killed my parents in front of me—he wouldn't have let me live if he did. We have a very unique advantage," she smiles at him, kissing him on the cheek, "I think it is time for a wedding."

...

The carriage that carries the wicked wizard King and his wife moves slowly through the forest. As the sun begins to set, he can feel his power has weakened. Having fed off of the innocent beauty of many a handsome boy for the past few years, each time he took a life it didn't quite recharge him as much as it had before. Every day that that awful stepson of his remained alive drained a little bit of his magic. When he died—the wizard felt renewed, rejuvenated for days until one afternoon, he noticed a dark spot on the back of his hand. He rushed to the mirror, demanding an answer only to be taken aback with a new foe—the sylvan King. The wizard cursed himself for releasing the spell on those horrible nymphs; one of them must have been the Prince. All he has to do now is kill the newly crowned royalty. It should be a simple task; the sylvans weren't very prepared at all and were practically defenseless against his dark magic, all except that wretched High Priestess. Though he tried to kill her several times when she was imprisoned, he never succeeded. The magic that the Spirit of the Forest bestowed upon her made it impossible to seal the lid on her coffin.

While the wizard is wary of the Priestess, he gladly responded to the invitation of the sylvan King and his Queen to be to witness their wedding, as an offering of truce. Though they requested he come alone with his wife and unarmed, his magic was something that could neither be seen, nor taken away; and since they didn't know that the evil wizard who attacked and killed the Spirit was one in the same the human King of the land, none would suspect him to arrive with ill intentions. He knew for certain that the High Priestess would be too ashamed of herself to ever show her face in any forest again, so his secret remains safe.

They are stopped in the forest by full sized guards, who check him and the Queen for weapons. They are then forced to walk the remaining distance on foot, though it isn't very far until he reaches the almost invisible gates of the fortress; made by growing trees and twisted stone, they blend so well as to give the illusion that the forest continues on uninterrupted. He walks down the moss covered path that weaves down from the gates, past the Spirit of the Forest and to the doors of the castle. The wizard is shocked and unnerved to discover that the Spirit, though nothing remaining but a thick stump, has a single sucker growing up from the roots, upon which a solitary red flower is in full bloom. Life for them has almost returned to normal—until he kills their King tonight.

He sees his wife observing her surroundings, something rather odd as she has been under his mindless spell for ears. As he strolls confidently through the castle gates, he sees that the crowd almost entirely sylvans. With the exception of a few brutish men, whoreish looking women and a bunch of dwarfs, he and the Queen are the only other humans. Before him, standing patiently, are the King and his Queen to be. The King is dressed in brown and green attire, mimicking a tree so well that one would be hard pressed to believe that it is fabric. Upon his head sits a tall, pointy crown, over which a sheer golden scarf is draped, masking his face to all. At his left is his bride, her gown resembling beautiful lily pedals, fading from a deep red at the hem all the way to a ghostly white bodice. Upon her head also sits a crown, with a red scarf draped over her face as well. He arrives in front of them and smiles, bowing deeply, "The King and Queen to be of the sylvans, I thank you for the honor of witnessing your wedding."

It isn't until he rises, that the wizard realizes neither of them have wings. His brow begins to furrow in confusion. Several guards slowly surround him as the Queen reaches up to remove her scarf. The wizard's jaw clenches when he sets eyes upon the High Priestess.

"So glad you could join us, King."

"You!"

She smiles curtly, "That is right; not only was I the High Priestess, I was also the Princess. I watched you murder my parents."

From the corner of his eye, he can see his wife slowly move away from him, her face wrought with confusion. The High Priestess' magic, coupled with the beauty of her mysterious husband, is weakening his.

"So, tonight King, you will pay for your crimes," she slowly turns to her King, who is still shrouded, "For the crimes of murdering innocent sylvans, innocent humans, innocent animals and the use of black magic—how do you find him?"

The sylvan King slowly removes his scarf, revealing skin as white as snow, hair as dark as night and lips as red as blood, "Guilty. And your punishment shall be death."

The wizard steps back, shocked to see Winter still alive. He feels his world begin to crumble; turning to his wife, he finds her on her knees, crying out of the joy of seeing that her son is still alive. He turns back to Winter and holds out his arm, drawing up his last remaining magic into a dark ball of smoke. He throws it at him.

Daphne steps in front of him and to everyone's shock, the ball dissipates before it even touches her; the Spirit of the Forest has her protected. She nods to the guards, who swiftly incapacitate the wizard. Winter slides his hand into hers, looking at his stepfather for the last time, "Your reign of terror is over. Take him away."

He is dragged, kicking and screaming, from the castle.

Daphne squeezes Winter's hand, turning to him. With a soft smile, she whispers, "Go to her."

Hesitantly, Winter walks to his mother, kneeling down next to her. He is afraid he will find her still an empty shell. Her shaking hand reaches out to his face and upon finding that he is real, she wraps her arms around his neck, sobbing loudly.

...

The seven dwarfs, their whores, Chester, Owen and Finley all return to the Inn, leading a fulfilling life in the world of prostitution. They are visited on occasion, by the King and Queen of Haven, who always take the suite.