Wed

Alina and Egan joined their hands together before the seer Gwen, she in a white dress, he in a clean shirt borrowed from the baker. Alina’s magic poured out of her, joy surrounding the few guests who’d been invited. Not too many. Not enough to get into trouble should they be caught. If a lawman happened by, they could argue that they were simply having a small picnic beneath the stars.

If that were the case, of course, Alina should have chosen yellow or beige for her dress. But her parents, long dead, had left her few choices. Her mother’s wedding dress had been cared for meticulously by her grandmother since her own happy day, even after her mother had passed on. Alina just couldn’t resist, and though the dress was a touch too big, she and Gwen had fastened it together with pins until it fit properly.

Now, Gwen raised her hands high up into the air, and her own magic drifted down from her palms, encircling their hands, forging the bond that would last them the rest of their lives. Blessing the union. Making two halves whole.

But the magic that swirled around them started to break apart. Gwen’s eyes grew wide, then squinted as she tried again. Around and around the aquamarine light surged, thicker now, Gwen desperate to make it to stay full and perfect.

But it didn’t. Instead, it broke apart into a thousand tiny bits of light, then evaporated into the night.

Egan didn’t know. His knowledge of magic was not extensive, and to him it simply looked like a pretty light show.

But Alina knew.

Gwen lowered her hands, then sandwiched the couple’s between her palms.

“Oh, children,” she said, her palms still pulsing with power. “I am so sorry.”

Two fat tears fell from Alina’s eyes, and she broke away from Egan and Gwen, running out of the meadow and back toward town.

“What is it?” Egan called, then turned to Gwen. “What is she doing?”

“I’m sorry, Egan, but this bond cannot be made.”

“What do you mean it can’t be made? We’re here, making it.”

“Oh, yes. Anyone can make a vow, but bad luck follows when the union is not secured.”

Then, he understood. The breaking of the circle; it hadn’t just been pretty lights as he’d thought.

“This is ridiculous.”

He turned away and ran after Alina.

“There is nothing to be done, Egan!” Gwen called after him.

Her voice became small as the sounds of his own feet on the dirt filled his ears.

She was wrong. He loved Alina more than anything in the world. The opinion of one person wouldn’t be enough to drive them apart. It couldn’t be. He wouldn’t let it.

It didn’t take him long to catch up with Alina, as she’d stopped behind one of the vendors’ tents and fallen to her knees, her face in her hands.

“Alina,” he panted as he caught up. “What are you doing?”

She shook her head, sobbing. He knelt down and put his arms around her. She buried her face into his clean shirt and cried.

“Darling, why are you so upset? So what if some old hag says we’re not perfectly, magically connected. Plenty of normal people get married all the time, don’t they? And they don’t have seers at their weddings giving their approval.”

“You shouldn’t call your grandmother an old hag,” she squeaked. “She’s one of the most powerful women in Eagleview. She’s not wrong.”

“But she is wrong. I want you. I choose you. Nothing she says is going to change that.”

He lifted her chin from his chest and looked into her eyes.

“I promise you, I will be with you always. Do you believe me?”

She did believe him, but that wasn’t the problem.

“You don’t understand. We’ll be cursed if we stay together. I’ve heard the stories. When I was little, my mother used to tell the tales that her mother, Gwen, had told her. Anytime a magic bond wasn’t made, the couple would face deep tragedy.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Egan said.

She shook her head.

“It’s not. You saw what happened to the magic bond she was trying to make. You saw that it broke apart, just like my own magic did.”

His stomach knotted at these words. Of course he had seen. Everyone had seen.

But no. He wouldn’t let one person’s magic tricks gone awry ruin his life. He’d made his decision.

“Do you still love me?” he asked, and suddenly his heart was pounding in his chest.

Her eyes met his.

“Of course I do,” she said.

“Then that’s all that matters. Listen, tomorrow we’ll go to the castle and ask to be married officially. No magic tricks necessary.”

“They aren’t tricks. She’s—”

“I know they aren’t tricks,” he said. “But they’re not always right. Think of how many times your own spells have gone off course.”

She nodded.

He pulled her close and put his lips on hers.

And there they were. Together. Bonded.

* * *

But the next day did not go well for them. Getting through the gates wasn’t too much of a problem once they told the guards where they were headed. Alina had on her white dress again, the part of the skirt that brushed her knees had been scrubbed of the dirt from her kneeling outside the market. Still, they were a ragged pair once they made it through the gates.

Egan held onto her hand tightly now, giving several reassuring squeezes, holding the paper they needed to give to the judge in his other hand. He was nervous, though. Not that he felt he was doing the wrong thing, but that maybe she did. He didn’t want her to break away from him again. What if this time he wasn’t able to catch her?

They approached the courts and presented their paper to a man sitting at a desk in front of the doorway. He looked it over carefully, then pulled out a large, bound book and opened it before them. His fingers moved down the pages, searching.

Egan smiled reassuringly at Alina, and he was relieved to see that she was smiling, too. She looked nervous, but no longer forlorn.

The man found what he was looking for, and took a long ruler and pencil and marked across the page.

“You are Alina of Eagleview Village, is that correct?” he asked.

“Yes, Sir,” she said, frowning. “Am I in your book?”

Egan was confused. Was he in the book as well?

“You are indeed notated upon these pages. I’m afraid you may not be married by this court. Please move along.”

“What?” Egan said. “Why can’t we be married?”

“The girl is shown in here to be a criminal. Only those of clear record may be married. You also must understand that any child born from you will cost you a tax of twenty pieces of silver per month.”

“What?” Alina cried. “Why?”

No children. The worst punishment of all.

“Why is she shown as a criminal?” Egan asked, growing upset. He looked over at Alina, lost. “Whom do we talk to about this? There must be some mistake.”

“Let’s just go,” she said, pulling him by his hand. There were already tears in her eyes.

“No! I don’t want to just walk away from this. It isn’t right. You’re no criminal.”

“I’ll explain,” she said, still pulling.

Two guards with swords approached them, and the man behind the table spoke up.

“Please escort these two out,” he said. “The decision is final.”

He snapped the book shut.

“Come on,” she said, tears streaming from her eyes now.

Finally, when one of the guards began to unsheathe his sword, Egan obliged and followed her back out into the square.

“What is going on?” he asked. “I don’t understand. Why did you let him just brush you off like that?”

“Because to them I am a criminal. I didn’t think it would ever haunt me like this. I thought if I kept my head down, I would be free. But Zahn never forgets.”

“Zahn the seer? What does this have to do with him?”

“When I was a child, I was presented for a trial with him,” she whispered. “I overpowered him, and he sent me to the tower to await death from the dragon who descended there every night.”

“Oh, my God,” he said.

“Yes. I was just eight-years-old, so I didn’t understand. I did as he said, but when the dragon came, he didn’t kill me as Zahn thought he would. Instead, he took me to his lair and gave me that which was most precious to him, a bone from his love’s skeleton, infused with great magic. When I brought it back to Zahn, he was unable to use it, and he became furious. I barely made it out of there alive. Only the appearance of the dragon every night since that day has kept me out of danger.”

“What? You see a dragon every night?”

“No, I don’t always see Urvar, but I know he comes. He’s my protector.” She looked down at her hands, which were clenched together now. “But his protection has cursed me in other ways.”

“Why all this talk of curses?” Egan asked. “I don’t believe a word of it.”

She scowled up at him, crossing her arms over her chest.

“You don’t believe me? Really? You think I’m lying to you?”

“No! No, that’s not what I mean.”

“Hmph,” she said, and turned her back to him.    

“Really, Alina, I do believe your story, and I would love to meet Urvar any night you wish. Every night if you wish. But I don’t believe that you’re cursed. I just don’t.” He touched her shoulder and pulled her around until they were face to face again. “Do you believe me? Because I don’t think that any one of us knows everything about this world we live in. A curse to you may be a gift to someone else.”

She allowed him to uncross her arms and wrap them around his middle. He pulled her in and held her tightly to his chest.

“We don’t need any of it. Because what if we were forced to be apart instead? Wouldn’t that be an even crueler curse to bear?”

She pulled away and looked into his eyes.

He was right. Of course he was right. A life apart would be the most terrible curse of all. She tried to imagine him in some other future, hand-in-hand with another girl in the market, perhaps.

It would break her.

No, he was right. She was the girl he would be hand-in-hand with. Forever.

* * *

But sometimes the sand in the hourglass spills down awfully quickly.

Egan and Alina lived on the outskirts of town in a shack behind their market stall. Egan would occasionally travel, sometimes for months at a time, to harvest light from the muses, the giant animals who ruled the lands they lived in. Of course, Alina could’ve sold her own magic and would’ve been able to make a fair amount of money doing so, but it was illegal for an untrained seer to even use magic in the kingdom, much less sell it.

So she was left by Egan again and again as he searched the world desperately for enough light to keep them in bread,  and her heart grew weary without him by her side. During the day, she would tend to the market stall where they sold the light that Egan harvested on his journeys, but at night, she was left on her own.

But then, one night she felt a stirring within her that she never would have expected. She felt certain that a child was growing within her belly, and sure enough, by the time Egan came home from his latest journey, her stomach was quite large.

He’d received the shock of his life when he’d found her pregnant, and a joy he didn’t expect filled him.

A baby. A child. He wondered if it would be a boy or a girl, but of course there was no way to tell these things.

“It’s a girl,” she said to him simply one night when he was musing over what life would be like with a little one. It wouldn’t be easy, but it would be perfect.

“How do you know it’s a girl?” he asked. “It could be either.”

Secretly, he was hoping for a boy, which wasn’t uncommon for fathers to do. But she was adamant.

“You’ll just have to trust me,” she sang. “Now, what shall we call her?”

He grimaced, unwilling to admit defeat so easily.

“Or him.”

She rolled her eyes and drew him close, putting his hand on her belly. Through her, she released a small amount of her power which pulsed up from her stomach and into his hand, into his being.

And then he understood. It was, in fact, a girl; there was no denying it.

His shoulders hunched, but he tried to keep his disappointment from her.

There was no way to do this, though. Living with a seer was like laying his emotions bare every night. There was no hiding his feelings, and while this was a good thing most of the time, there were other times when he wished he could have just a touch of privacy.

“You will love her,” Alina said, “for she is yours. You will be the best father. I just know it. And then, after a while, when the little one can toddle, we can have another, and maybe next time you will get your wish.”

Another. He wondered what the tax would be on a second child.

He put the thought aside and moved in for a kiss.

But she delayed him, already lost in thought.

“So, what should we call her?”

“How about Julia?” he asked.

Alina shook her head vigorously. “No. I don’t think so. We need something better than a simple name for this child. She will be strong and a touch wild, I think.”

“How do you know?” he asked. “She might be as docile as a fawn.”

Alina laughed.

“You do not feel what is going on inside of me,” she said. “She is active and relentless. She keeps me up all night with her kicks, and only when I’m up and about does she settle into sleep, herself. I predict she will be a demanding child.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Great.”

“We need to come up with a fiery sort of name for her. Something solid, but with a strong flame behind it.”

“How about Cara?”

“No.”

“Iona?”

“No.”

“Maeve?”

She laughed at this one.

“I think we should go see Gwen,” she said. “She will know the answer.”

Egan rolled his eyes, but he reluctantly agreed to join her the next evening at his grandmother’s house. He’d been wary of her ever since the night of their wedding, and he wasn’t interested in hearing more bad news. Magic was a wonderful, mysterious thing, but part of him wanted to work only with cold, hard facts.

They were still married. Still happy. And now, happier than ever with the imminent arrival of their little one. Nothing Gwen could say would change his mind.

But Gwen didn’t say anything of the sort to put him on edge. In fact, she made them a lovely dinner of bread and tomatoes with a touch of spice. Then, after they were all fed and happy, she raised up her glass of wine, a true delicacy, and declared that it was time for her to tell them a story.

“A story?” Egan asked. “To what do we owe this magic? I hope it is a happier tale than we’ve heard from you in the past.”

She raised an eyebrow at him, but he did not deter her.

“My story is about a young girl and her love. This girl, Bree, was born in the Lost Kingdom, but long before it was called Lost. Many ages ago, the kingdom was called Hawk’s Crossing, and many who lived within its walls were happy and protected.

“Bree’s sister had fallen in love with a young man whom her parents didn’t approve of. He was wild with magic, and this scared her mother particularly, for her own sister had once been badly injured by a spell gone awry.

“She was right to be concerned about this young man asking for her daughter’s hand. One night, when the family lay sleeping, the boy came calling for the sister. When she showed her face in the tiny window of her shack, he tried to send up a magic symbol to reiterate his intention to marry her.

But the boy’s spell had quickly overpowered him, untrained as he was, and in his haste to try to fix what he’d broken, he’d set the shack alight with flame.

“The family made it out of the shack alive, but they were devastated in every way that one could be. Their house lay in embers, their daughter was gravely injured, and soon enough she would die.

“And yet, on the day of her burial, young Bree walked up to this boy and took his hand in hers. In this way, they became bonded. Her family took him in, moving him with them to the shack they were renting while their other was rebuilt from the ashes. They hid the boy, knowing that if he were to be released, they would never see him again, and that their other daughter’s heart, Bree’s, would be irreparably broken.

“You might ask, why did they love him so? They were a wise family, and they were able to find light within their loss. Over time, they realized that they’d made a mistake in trying to keep their daughter and this boy apart. The brightness that the young man brought to the family soothed their pain over their lost daughter, and gave them hope about the future.

“But then, one day the young man disappeared, for, much like in Eagleview, the untrained were not allowed to use magic. Eventually, as word spread of the Bree’s sister’s death, the lawmen of that kingdom searched for him high and low. They didn’t find him at home, though they searched there, too, but in the rocks that led up to the Soaring Mountains. He had seen them coming, and he had hidden himself as best he could. But they found him in the end and brought him back to the castle in chains.

“The family was upset. They had taken him in, cared for him, and long since forgiven him for the terrible accident that had taken their daughter’s life.

“Now the three of them, Bree and her parents, watched in tears as the boy was taken in shackles to the very center of the square. The man in charge, the general of the kingdom’s army, did not even speak to the crowd that gathered. He simply rose his sword and, strong as he was, swung the sword down, intending to cut off the boy’s head.

“However, the kingdom had underestimated the effect the boy had had on the family. Each of them, father, mother, and Bree, raced into the square just as the executioner was about to bring down his sword on the boy’s neck. The two parents attacked the knight from behind and pulled his sword away, while Bree unlocked the boy’s bonds and pulled him from the square. She knew that they might not survive the night, that her parents, at least, would likely be dead at any moment.

“So she ran. She gripped the boy’s hand in hers, and the two of them fled the kingdom together. From over the castle walls they could hear the cheering of a crowd, and she knew that her parents had come to a violent end. This made her run even faster.

“But behind her, the boy pulled her to a stop. His hands burned with magic a moment later, and he put one on Bree’s heart and one on his own. The wild magic swirled around them causing a dome of light so bright that the people inside the castle saw the night sky light up as if it were daytime. And when he was done with his spell, both Bree and himself had become dragons, made forever invisible to all but the most powerful seers. Together they took flight over the castle until they were soaring together toward the mountains outside Hawk’s Crossing. With their newfound strength, they found a cave to live in, and they were never seen as humans again.

“Bree had shown bravery that few men could ever claim to have. She had connected herself with the unwitting killer of her only sister. She broke him free from the edge of a sword, and she followed him without question into the mountains for a new life neither of the could have imagined before.

“So, you see, it is no surprise that her name holds the meaning that it does, for Bree carries power and strength and virtue.

“So, I ask of you, do consider this name for your little one. She will need it living in this world.”

“The dragon,” Alina breathed. She turned to Gwen. “Was the boy’s name Urvar?”

Gwen raised her eyebrows.

“Why, yes,” she said, a little confused. “Have I told you this story before?”

Alina shook her head, but her mind was made up in that instant. She turned to Egan.

“We will name her Bree,” she said.

He opened his mouth to argue, but then he thought he understood.    

“The dragon?” he whispered.

She nodded her head.

“Yes. And his love, the one from whom the dragon bone came, was Bree.”

Egan’s eyes widened at the revelation, and suddenly all of this disappointment in having a girl, and the silly tiffs they’d been having over her name, evaporated. This girl would be blessed to carry such a name.

He opened his arms and pulled Alina into a hug.

“Thank you Gwen,” he said. “Truly.”

Egan had never thought he would say such things to the woman who had seemingly cursed their union, but this gift she gave now was without compare.

They spent the rest of the night with Gwen, for the curfew would result in imprisonment if they were caught out past sunset. She offered her bed to them, as they were her guests, and she found a place on the floor with two pillows beneath her.

But Gwen couldn’t sleep, and soon Alina felt the same restlessness. The two of them locked eyes in the dark, and the words that were exchanged between them were without a voice.

“You know what will happen,” Gwen said.

Alina looked on, suddenly frightened, for she, too, had visions of what little Bree’s life would be. In every picture in her mind, she, herself, was absent.

“Is it decided?” she whispered in the darkness.

“It’s not decided by anyone at all. It’s simply what will come to pass. I’m so sorry, child.”

Alina nodded, and despite the revelation that she would soon be facing death, she found peace in the vision that her daughter would survive.

But she also knew that Egan would be devastated, and despite her daughter’s survival, she would not have a happy childhood.

She recognized now that the little flashes she’d been having throughout her pregnancy were warnings from her heart. There was a reason that she was not in the visions. Instead, it was more as if she were following behind her daughter, watching her move through her difficult life.

And Egan. How alone he would feel without Alina there to comfort him.

She rolled over and watched him breathe for a few moments, then nuzzled up close to him and wrapped her arms around his sleeping body.

She would take every day, every moment, every breath and turn them all to magic. When she was gone, he would remember her in her most powerful state, her best health, alive and vibrant, full to bursting with child.

And when she was gone, she prayed to the heavens that he would love this child, just as she already did.

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