There was something else, never discussed, and shunned even in the farthest secret reaches of the mind, but still present. No family was ever ended by the faeries’ attentions. The first-born were rarely taken; usually they were the second- or third- or fourth-born. And never more than one child from a family disappeared, even if the entire family was spectacular in its beauty and charm and general desirability. This meant that the worst never quite happened; the spirit and will were never quite broken. And in that uncommonly beautiful land, living under that particular sky, it was difficult if not impossible not to recover from almost anything but death itself.
But this narrow boon, this last hope not quite betrayed, was not talked about—not because of the simple dreadfulness of being grateful that only one child is forfeit. No, there was something else which cut even deeper: the omniscience indicated by the faeries’ choice. First children were, in fact, sometimes taken, and how could the invisible thieves know in advance that more children would be born? Or that some sudden sickness would not take away the one or two that remained? But these things never happened; the faeries always knew. It wasn’t something that those who had to live with it found themselves capable of thinking about. There were always the other things to think about, the good things.
Perhaps it came out even in the end; perhaps even a little better than even. The land was peaceful, and evidently always had been; even the history books could recount no wars. When there were storms at harvest time or sullen wet springs when the seeds died underground, somehow there was always just enough left to get everyone through the winter. And childless couples who desperately wanted children did eventually have one—or perhaps two; and if the faeries snatched one, they were still one better off than they had once feared they would remain. And so the years passed, and one generation gave way to the next, and the oldest trees in the oldest forests grew a little taller and a little thicker still; and the fireside tales of a family became the legends of a country.
But that same time that changed a quiet story into a far-striding legend changed also the people who told and retold it. The world turned, and new stories rose up, and the legends of the old days faltered a little, or turned themselves in their course to keep up with the lives of their people, and the lives of great-grandchildren of those they had first known. Perhaps even the immortal ones beyond the borders of this last land felt the change in some fashion: for that they ventured at all, and for whatever reason, into mortal realms risked them to some sense of mortal lives and cares. Perhaps.
PART ONE
THE FAERIES had never been much noted for stealing members of the royal family of that last kingdom, perhaps because that family was more noted for its political acumen and a rather ponderous awareness of its own importance than for lightness of foot and spirit or beauty of face and form. But the current Queen’s own sister, her twin sister, on the eve of their seventeenth birthday, had been stolen; and the Queen herself had never quite gotten over it. Or so everyone else thought: the Queen tried not to think of it at all.
The twins had been their royal parents’ only children, and they were as beautiful as dawn, as spring, as your favorite poem and your first love: as beautiful as the rest of their family—aunts, uncles, cousins, and cousins-several-times-removed—were kind and stuffy and inclined to stoutness. The twins were kind, too, probably as kind as they were beautiful, which could not have been said of their worthy but plump parents.
Alora was the eldest by about half an hour, and so it was understood that she would eventually be Queen; but this cast no shadow between her and Ellian her sister, as you knew at once when you saw them together. And they were always together. Alora was fair and Ellian dark; it was easy to tell them apart with your eyes open. But with your eyes shut, it was impossible: they both had the same husky, slightly breathless voice, and they thought so much alike that you could expect the same comment from either of them. The people loved them; loved them so much that no one felt the desire to indulge in a preference for one sister over the other.
Not that they were stupidly interchangeable. They understood that the sympathy between them was so great that it left them quite free: and so Alora played the flute, and Ellian the harp; Ellian preferred horseback riding and Alora bathing in the lake, where she could outswim many of the fish, while Ellian paddled and floated and got her hair in her eyes and laughed. Alora could sing and Ellian could not. And each wore clothes that suited her individual coloring best; they made no mistakes here. But while they each rode a white mare on state occasions, Ellian’s had fire in its eye and a curl to its lip, while Alora had to wear spurs to keep hers from falling asleep.
They slept in the same room, their tall canopied princesses’ beds each pushed under a tall mullioned window. The room was large enough for both of them and their ladies-in-waiting and their royal robes not to get too severely in one another’s way when they were dressing for a high court dinner, but not so large that they could not whisper to each other when they should have been asleep, and not lose the whispers into the high carved ceiling and the deep rugs and curtains. And so it was that when Alora opened her eyes on her seventeenth birthday and saw the sun shining as though he were convinced that this was the finest day he had ever seen and he must make the most of it, she looked across the room to her sister’s bed and found it empty. She knew at once what had happened, although neither of them had ever thought of it before. If Ellian had gone out early, she would have awakened her sister first, in case she would like to accompany her—as Alora would have. They always accompanied each other. The little blue flowers called faeries’-eyes scattered across the coverlet were not more dreadful to her now than the fact of the empty bed itself.
A few minutes later when they found her, Alora was curled up on her sister’s bed, weeping silently and hopelessly into her sister’s pillow. When they lifted her up, they were surprised by a faint mysterious smell from the bruised flowers she had lain upon. The ladies bundled the coverlet up, flowers and all, and took it away, and burnt it.
The Queen and the ladies-in-waiting cried and wailed till the whole palace was infected, and the people who were gathered in the palace courtyard ready to cheer the opening festivities of the Princesses’ birthday groaned aloud when they heard the news, given by the King himself with tears running down his face; and many wept as bitterly as Alora herself as they went their sorry ways homeward.