Isle of Wysteria: The Reluctant Queen (67 page)

“That’s right, he’s my escort! The Queen gave him to me,” Setsuna bragged, grabbing his muscular arm.

“Don’t say it like that,” he corrected.

The guard tapped her staff and they were released from the living wood. “However, The Queen insists that you not refer to him as your escort.”

“Wait, she can hear us?” Setsuna asked, looking around eerily.

“The Queen is the forest, the forest is the Queen.”

Setsuna glanced over at Privet for confirmation.

He shrugged. “How would I know?”

“What should I call him then?” Setsuna inquired.

“She recommended the term ‘tour guide.’“

“That’s not nearly as fun,” Setsuna pouted, her lip sticking out.

The guard leaned in close to Setsuna, her eyes fierce. “Watch your step, outlander. You betrayed her in the vault. You betray one of us, you betray all of us, and the forest doesn’t forget.”

“How does she know about that?” Setsuna asked.

“If the Queen knows it, the forest knows it,” she said with a tap of her staff.

The guard spun around and left, leaving the two standing in a state of semi-shock.

Setsuna leaned in towards Privet. “Your hometown is kinda creepy.”

“Don’t I know it.”

As the guard spun around and left, they walked around the fountain at the center of the plaza. Sparkling amber water flowed down from great leaves above, rolling over the surface of the wood and spinning some pinwheels the kids had placed before moving through a channel and falling down to the next level far below them.

“It looks like most of these shops are closed,” Setsuna noticed with disappointment.

“I told you there wouldn’t be anything to do. There’s a war going on right now.”

“All the more reason to have fun,” Setsuna concluded. “How would you feel if you died tomorrow, knowing that you could have gone out on a date with a beautiful woman today?”

Setsuna grabbed his hand and pulled him up to a door.

An older man opened the door, fancily dressed, a silver tray in hand. “I am very sorry, but Lady Cottonwood and both her daughters have been called to the front lines. The restaurant is currently closed.”

Setsuna linked her fingers and rocked from side to side, looking like a little kid. “But we are sooo hungry. Could we pweeease come in?”

“I’m very sorry,” the man said with a bow.

“Okay, just please promise not to fall in love with me, that would be a hassle.” Setsuna kissed her finger and placed it against his cheek. The man panicked and closed the door without ever raising his eyes.

“What was that about?” Privet asked as they walked on.

Setsuna gave him a sidelong glance. “I’m sure you've noticed how cute I am. Boys always flock to me; that’s why I’m always shunned by girls. It’s all such a bother, really.”

“Uh, huh.”

Setsuna abruptly stopped walking.

“Whats wrong?” he asked, turning around.

She pointed at a young man calmly sweeping out the front porch of his Matron’s house.

“That young guy over there, he hasn’t looked at me once.”

Privet chuckled. “The men here are taught to keep their eyes down.”

She tilted her head to side side, making her pigtails bounce. “Really?”

Setsuna vanished and then reappeared on the porch next to the young man. He seemed startled, but kept his eyes down as she leaned in towards him to introduce herself. A little vexed, she ported in front of another man who was trimming the verge in front of his Matron’s house, and gave him a sultry glance as she posed, showing off her toned, athletic body. When he didn’t react, she appeared before another, and then another, each time striking a more shameless pose than before in an attempt to solicit a reaction.

Privet couldn’t help but chuckle to himself. Setsuna was many things, but most of all she was vibrant and alive. She owned herself completely. She knew exactly what she wanted, and she persued it without hesitation and without shame. She bowed to no one. He reluctantly admitted to himself that she really would make a good match for him.

Within half a minute, the plaza was devoid of men, all of them having retreated indoors, and Setsuna reappeared next to Privet, looking disgusted.

“Grogs, this place is frustrating. I’m wearing the cutest outfit I own and none of these guys will even look at me.”

Privet rubbed his forehead. “The old women in charge around here consider it disrespectful.”

Setsuna scoffed as they began walking again. “If I wanted men’s respect, I wouldn’t be wearing a micro mini-skirt.”

“Well, what do you want from them?”

“I want their attention.” She wrapped her hands around her waist and wiggled her hips, as if enjoying a scrumptious dessert. “I want their yummy, wanton gazes. Their hungry eyes locked onto me. I want them to notice nothing else.”

Privet looked at her oddly. “Why would you want that?”

“Because it’s the ultimate validation,” she said as she spun around on one toe. “It makes you feel like a rare and precious gem, something of great value...” She paused and looked him over for a moment. “You probably wouldn’t understand.”

“No, I totally get it,” he said as he climbed up a ladder made of living wood. “You forget, I've been property most of my life. And believe me, there’s a huge downside to being considered valuable property.”

“What’s that?” she asked as she followed.

“When someone obtains something really valuable, they try and lock it away.”

Privet crossed a platform and started across a bridge to the next tree over.

Before following him, Setsuna glanced over the side. “Holy bogs, we're up high,” she shrieked.

Privet stopped. “Don’t tell me you're afraid of heights.”

“This isn’t heights, this is soooo much higher than heights. This is...a summit. There are mountains shorter than this.”

“You're the one who gated us up here, what do you have to be afraid of?”

There was a gust of wind and the tree slowly swayed to one side. Setsuna yelped and appeared next to him, clutching his arm.

He sighed. “You just wanted an excuse to grab my arm, didn’t you?”

“Of course not,” she denied, squeezing his large biceps with her fingers for good measure. “Holy cow, your muscles are so tight. Can you flex them for me?”

“Come on,” he said. “I want to try and pick up some fire peppers for Hanner.”

“I thought that was just a stereotype.”

“Oh no, they can’t get enough of the stuff.”

As they crossed the bridge, a dark figure peeked around a corner, keeping them in view.

Privet was able to find an open shop in a nearby tree, run by a kindly old Matron. At first she moved to politely decline, but when she recognized Privet, she offered to serve them lunch. “If it wasn’t for you, our Queen would have never made it out of the vaults,” she said kindly, before throwing Setsuna a sharp glance.

The branches and wood around her shop had been grown into a building in the shape of a lotus blossom, a small cafe table placed on each petal-shaped balcony. As they sat and ate their food, they looked out on the striking view afforded them of the forest valley and the cascading waterfalls rolling off the larger trees to the south.

“Can you pass me the salt?” Privet asked as he took a bite. After basking in Alder’s cooking for so long, he was becoming a little finicky.

“This one’s empty,” Setsuna revealed, tapping the lotus-shaped salt shaker.

Privet looked around. “I think there’s one at the other table.”

“I'll get it,” she asserted, grabbing his hand to keep him from rising. A small tear opened underneath the salt shaker on the other table and the shaker fell down into it. It reappeared from another tear next to her and fell down into her waiting hand.

Privet pulled his hand out from underneath hers and took the shaker. “So, how come sometimes I can see your gates and sometimes I can’t?” he asked as he salted his food.

“There are lots of different kinds of gates,” Setsuna explained, poking at her food. “Some you create for a bit, others are always there and you just open them. Given enough time, you can even create permanent gates if you want to. Most of them lead to places, but some don’t.”

Privet wrinkled his nose at her.

“Here, I'll open one you can see.”

She moved aside the bag of lava peppers, then created a small portal in the air before them, and Privet examined it closely. The edges were ill-defined, a kind of thickening mist that swirled in the center and evaporated at the edges. It was flat, like a piece of paper, but try as he might he could not see the width of it as he moved his head around. When viewed from the side, it seemed to disappear completely. Its sister gate sat in the air alongside it.

Setsuna took a bagel from her plate and dropped it into one of the gates. It popped up from the second gate then fell back down into it, only to pop up again from the first gate. Watching the bagel pop up and down was strangely hypnotic. It gave it the sense of being weightless somehow.

“We are all born with two gates,” she explained. “One in our mind, and another in our heart. Most people just never learn how to open them.” Setsuna leaned forward, hooding her green eyes in a very sultry way. “Do you know where they lead?”

Privet cleared his throat and tried to ignore the obvious advance. Cold experience had taught him to beware a beautiful face with an outstretched hand.

“So, you can move them around, right?” he asked, spouting the first question he could think of.

Setsuna flicked one of the gates and repositioned it. They were now directly above one another. The bagel fell out of the one on top then fell into the one on the bottom, reappearing above again and falling down again. The bagel fell faster and faster, until it was little more than a blur streaking through the space between the two gates.

“That’s a neat trick. Does it just keep going faster?” Privet asked, amazed at the odd display.

“It seems like things can only fall so fast,” Setsuna shared. “I think it has something to do with their shape.”

Setsuna absentmindedly spun the top gate, and the speeding bagel shot out of it as if it had been fired out of a cannon. They watched it streak away, disappearing into the canopy of another tree. A moment later, there was the sound of glass breaking and someone screaming.

Privet and Setsuna burst out laughing, ducking down a little as if they were kids fearing to be caught.

From another table at the cafe, a dark figure watched them as they laughed and chatted.

Privet took the last bite of his food and noticed she had barely touched hers. “You don’t like meat pies?” he asked

“Oh, I like the meat pies they make back home, I don’t like the ones you have here.”

“Why’s that? Different spices or something?”

“I think it’s because yours are made out of real meat and ours are made out of illegal immigrants or something,” she jested.

Privet chuckled. “So how did you end up becoming...you know...a pirate lord?”

She shrugged. “I chose it.”

“Really?”

“Oh yeah, working is hard, and marrying some ol’ rich guy sounds easy until you realize you have to kiss those wrinkly ol’ lips every morning. Ultimately, stealing just cuts out the middle man.”

“Uh huh.”

Sessuna took her water glass and traced her finger along the ridge. For a moment, her armor seemed to come down and she became more serious.

“It started out as a game, you know? My father was a good dad, but he never met a jatlat table he didn’t love, if you know what I mean. He got in debt hard; he got in debt with the kind of people you do not want to ever owe money to. When he couldn’t pay, they took my sister Sawyn.”

Setsuna traced her finger faster, causing the crystal in the water glass to sing sweetly. “Sawyn’s not like me, she’s one of those gentle people. Too gentle for this world. She never would have survived. So, I started thieving to get her back. Along the way, I made some mistakes. Got my pretty face on a few posters, got thrown in a couple of jails.”

“Not that they could hold you,” Privet observed.

Setsuna chuckled. “You can break out, but they still hold you. By the time I had enough money to buy Sawyn’s freedom there wasn’t anything else I could do. You think the world would be big enough to just go somewhere else and start over, but the world’s a lot smaller than you realize.”

“But you were a Guild Master, one of the most powerful pirates in the world.”

Setsuna took a drink of water. “To be honest, I never really wanted to lead a whole Guild. Too much paperwork. Too much drama and gossip. But, when you are good at something, you sift your way to the top, even if you'd rather not be good at it in the first place.”

Privet reached out and flicked her in the forehead. “Look at you, being all serious.”

“Hey, I’m always serious,” she chuckled. “I’m probably the most serious person you've ever met.”

“You forget, I've met Alder.”

Setsuna picked up a cucumber chip and placed it over one eye as if it were a monocle. “I’m just trying to communicate with you,” she said with a faux academic accent. “Every relationship needs communication. You should say what you want to say, even if I don’t want to hear it.”

Privet laughed. “You really are serious about this, aren’t you?”

Setsuna set the chip down and turned her eyes away bashfully. “Of course I am. I mean, this is the longest relationship I've ever been in where no one got stabbed.”

“Not for lack of trying,” Privet added with a smile.

Setsuna smiled back and placed her hand on his. He didn’t pull away.

Why am I overthinking this?
Privet thought to himself.
I mean, it’s not like there is just one person in the world I could be with. In reality, there are probably a great number of people I could be happy with, so why not just pick one? And why not this girl? I like her well enough. We could have quite the exciting life together. Sailing wherever we want, a life of adventure, thumbing our noses at authority. I would be happy enough with her.

As if sensing his thoughts, Setsuna closed her beautiful almond-shaped eyes and leaned in, waiting for him to kiss her.

Why am I hesitating? I’m a grown man. If you like her, just go for it and kiss her.