Sample chapter: The Princess of Ruby Island

Jessica wasn’t sure that she liked her niece’s new boyfriend. It wasn’t necessarily the way he spent the whole party lurking in the corner on his phone – he didn’t know anybody except Steph very well, and frankly it was kind of bizarre for Steph to have invited a guy she’d been seeing for a month to her aunt’s 40th birthday, of course he was going to be shy and hide behind his phone, and Jessica’s mother muttering about him ‘being rude’ clearly didn’t remember what it was like to be a teenager in a room of strangers. No, Jess didn’t fault him for that; she faulted him for the way he talked to Steph. The hesitation in answering her questions with stiff, one-word answers, the little eye-rolls, the way he sort of implied (although not quite directly enough that anyone could call him on it without looking confrontational) that every minor inconvenience he experienced was due to Steph being inconsiderate. Jess found her jaw tightening more and more throughout the night, wondering where the line was, how she could stand up for her niece without looking like she was disrespecting her niece’s choices. Terrible as those choices might be.

Jess’s brother clearly wasn’t in favour of the boy either. Kevin was two years older than Jess and as fiercely protective of his daughter as he had been of Jess when they were kids. Jess could see him reign himself in with every snide remark, reminding himself that Steph was fifteen and old enough to make her own mistakes. Steph’s mother had had to work and miss the party, which was probably a good thing, because Jess was pretty sure she would have punched the brat by now. (Well, no, she wouldn’t actually hit a kid. But she’d have thrown him out on his ear, never mind that it was Jess’ house.)

They sang Happy Birthday, and Jess blew out the candles by taking them off the cake and blowing them out in her hand, and Kevin made a silly remark about the old days when birthdays were about breathing one’s germs all over a cake and then serving it to your loved ones, and Steph’s boyfriend ate his piece as quickly as possible and then started asking Steph if it was time to go yet, quietly enough that he probably thought the adults couldn’t hear him. Steph, halfway through her own slice, asked her dad if it was time to go yet, wording the question as if she was the one who wanted to leave. Kevin clutched his tiny cake fork so hard that his knuckles went white.

“In a little while, sweetheart,” was all he said, in a perfectly even and friendly tone of voice, and Jess’ mother took an extra long time making everyone a cup of tea so they could sit around and talk about the sorts of things that bored teenagers out of their minds and make the kid wait even longer.

Eventually they did have to wrap things up, and the teenagers headed for Kevin’s car; Steph blushing and hesitant, her date moving quickly enough to border on rude. Kevin gave Jess a hug and kissed her cheek. “Happy tenth birthday, sis.”

“Still not funny.”

“I only get to tell my silly joke once every four years, indulge me.”

Jess rolled her eyes. There were drawbacks to being born on February 29th, and all of them were related to having a brother who though he was hilarious.

“Sorry about Josh,” Kevin said.

“She’ll come to her senses and dump him eventually. You an I dated our fair share of arseholes in high school.”

“God, yeah. Remember Barry?”

“Remember Alanna?”

“Alanna wasn’t my fault! I had the ‘flu when I made that decision!”

“And you kept dating her for three months after you recovered, for some reason.”

“Sunk cost fallacy.”

“If we don’t leave now, we won’t beat the rain,” Jess’ mum pointed out. She said her own goodbyes and rushed her son out the door.

Leaving Jess alone with half a birthday cake.

The family seemed to be getting smaller every year. Her dad had died a couple of years ago, and her Mum couldn’t drive so only came to events if someone could drive her, and her nephew had just been accepted for an apprenticeship and couldn’t always make engagements any more. Her mother was in good health for her age, but a naturally reckless person, and bound to die in some ridiculous fashion sooner or later. Jess knew that the family wasn’t actually getting smaller – within the decade, there’d probably be another generation, and parties would feel too big again – but it did feel like it sometimes.

Maybe she just needed to get out of the house more. That was it.

She put the cake in the fridge, eyed the sink of dishes, decided they could wait until morning, and went to bed.

And woke up under a tree.

This would be unusual under the best of circumstances, but as Jess blinked up at the branches, she realised that this particular tree wasn’t made of wood. It was a metal sculpture of some kind. She got to her feet (and noticed she was naked, for some reason, so maybe this was an anxiety dream of some kind) and inspected the trunk.

The tree was mostly some kind of grey metal – iron? Jess didn’t know much about metals – but woven through it were streaks of gold, silver, copper, other shades of grey. A whole lot of metals not combined into an alloy, but laid in streaks in the sculpture, mimicking the growth of wood. The branches were bare of leaves, just stark twigs of pale grey wire reaching up into the dawn sky – Jess reached out to touch some, and immediately sliced a couple of fingertips open, so great fucking job there.

She stuck the bleeding fingers into her mouth (they hurt, of course, which wasn’t surprising; Jess always felt pain in dreams regardless of what pop culture had told her), glanced around, and saw somebody staring at her.

The metal tree was atop a small hill, more a mound than anything, bare of anything except a soft lawn of clover in a large clearing in what looked like a pretty dense forest. And about halfway up the hill, staring at her with wide green eyes, was a fairy.

There was no other way to describe him. He was pale and very thin, with shoulder-length blue hair held out of his face with a ribbon of woven vines. He looked to be an older teenager, or maybe young adult, though he was short, about as high as her shoulders. He wore nothing but a pair of green shorts and carried a large woven basket full of tiny, brightly coloured flowers, cut from their plants and piled in like a mound of confetti. And all of these things were things she didn’t notice until after the wings.

Emerald green as his eyes and somewhat tattered around the edges, they were spread wide, creating a sort of backdrop for the rest of his body. They were vaguely shaped like butterfly wings, each with an upper and lower segment, but much more angular, and he seemed to have more control over their orientation because after a few seconds of staring he folded them down where they streamed behind him like a cape, ending mere inches above his ankles, as he dashed up the hill towards her.

Jess had seconds – seconds – to come up with some way to explain herself. She opened her mouth. Nothing came out.

The fairy boy dropped to his knees in front of her, basket carelessly tossed aside and scattering brightly coloured flowers across the clover. Before she could back away, he had his hands around her ankles and pressed his forehead to her feet, sobbing.

“Princess!” he gasped in a voice as melodic as wind chimes, yet somehow perfectly understandable. “Princess! You’re returned to us!”

“Um.” Jess pondered the politest way to step back when somebody was literally holding your ankles.

“We knew you would return! We knew, if we kept faith, you would – ” he sprang back up onto his knees suddenly, and crawled over to start trying to scrape the spilled flowers back into the basket. “I bring you our offering! And offering of devotion of the Fairy Village! We grew them strong around your home, we knew – ” He lifted the basket, about three quarters full of distinctly bruised and tattered blossoms, up to her. “For you, Princess!”

Jess reached out and took the basket, which seemed to please the fairy, as he leapt to his feet and gave her a low bow instead. “Come, come; your home is ready for you. Everything is ready for you, Princess! We will get you a fine nectarsilk robe and celebrate with flower wine!”

At the mention of clothing, Jess realised, once again, that she was naked. It would be nice to get some clothes and get more information on what was happening, but pretending to be a princess to do it was probably more dangerous than helpful.

“I’m not… sorry, I’m… a bit confused.” She stayed where she was, although the fairy was trying to coax her to follow him into the forest. “I’m not a princess, I just… woke up here. My name’s Jess. What’s yours?”

The fairy eyed her for several seconds, head cocked, silent. He seemed disappointed in her. Nevertheless, he gave her another, stiffer bow, and said, “I am your servant regardless, Prin – Lady Jess. And my name is Dahi.”

“Come, come. Your house awaits, my Lady. Everyone will be so happy to see you.”

This time, Jess followed him down the hill. “I’m not sure who you think I am, but…”

“We are pleased to receive you no matter who you choose to be, my Lady,” Dahi said smoothly. “The village will be grateful that you have returned at all.”

He lead her between the trees, over thick, knotted roots and through underbrush. The trees themselves were the biggest that Jess had ever seen, every one of them with a trunk at least three or four times wider than her body and some of them as big as those enormous trees that showed up in photos on the internet occasionally, where you could fit a cabin inside them. The path they were following had distinctly less underbrush than the surrounding forest and no stray branches below shoulder height, although the occasional twig was poised to hit Jess’ face. It seemed that this path did get some foot traffic. The ground beneath the undergrowth seemed a lot smoother than the huge tree roots of the large, thickly growing trees would suggest; Jess paused to kick away some grasses and saw dirt and stones firmly packed under there. A quick investigation off the path (Dahi followed closely, but made no move to stop her) showed that the roots out there breached the ground like piles of writhing snakes, creating rises and pits hidden by the thick coverage of ferns, leaving it a dangerous place to even walk.

So the path that Dahi was leading her down was a footpath that had once been created with effort and care, now largely reclaimed by the forest. Interesting.

The village wasn’t too far from the clearing. They’d been walking barely five minutes when Jess started to hear the activity of people; people walking about, carrying and pouring and grinding things, talking to each other in those wind-chime-like voices. As they got close, the sounds of the village went quiet, and Jess wondered whether they could sense somehow that a stranger was int heir midst. Hear her, probably, clumsily stumbling along behind Dahi’s dextrous, feather-light steps.

The fairy village was built, of course, in the trees. Well, not entirely in the trees; there were a lot of ground-level buildings, made of woven wood and some kind of mud-based plaster, but vines and ladders lead up into the treetops where houses haphazardly clung to the trunks like enormous mushrooms. The forest was much, much thinner in the village, thin enough that sunlight hit the ground in patches unimpeded by leaves and you could drive a large truck between the trees. The ground was largely flat, made of packed earth and stone, and covered in fallen leaves but mostly free of plants.

And the fairies were staring at her.

Three or four dozen of them, at least, peeking out of windows or down from branches or just standing stock still on the ground with armloads of cloth or food. There were a few still, silent seconds, before the cry went up.

“Princess! Princess!”

“The Princess has returned to us!”

“Princess Melodia! All hail Princess Melodia!”

The basket was taken from her hands, a green robe of some smooth, soft material was placed over her shoulders, flowers were woven into her hair, all by strange fairy hands as other fairies took her elbows and gently guided her towards the centre of the village. Somebody tried to put a fine silver tiara on her head, only for Dahi to knock it away and announce as loudly as he could, “The Lady has rejected her crown!”

There was some hesitance and confusion in the crowd at this, but those guiding Jess didn’t flinch. “That’s alright, Lady Melodia, that’s alright; we are so grateful to have you here.”

“I’m not her,” Jess insisted. “I’m not Melodia. My name's Jess.”

“Yes, Lady Jess, as you say, Lady Jess.”

In the centre of town was a large ring of tiny red-and-white mushrooms, and the area inside the ring was free of any plants except for the same soft clover on the hill. This are was clearly used a lot more, as the clover was trodden down and the ground simply bare mud in some places. Next to the mushroom ring was a large tree with a smooth, ash-white trunk, and built against that tree was a cottage.

The cottage had brown, thick walls, built of some kind of plaster with a woven grass roof. Into the corners, window frames and doorframe, precious gems had been stuck into the plaster, a dash of rainbow colours accenting the lines of the house. The door was elaborately carved wood with a silver handle, and Jess was ushered inside.

“Rest, rest; we will bring food for you, Princess. We will bring bathwater for you. We will plan a festival right away. We knew you would come back. We knew you would never abandon us. Everyone will be so, so happy to see you, Princess.”

And the door was closed behind her.

Jess stared at the blood on her fingertips, at the robe on her shoulders, at the mushroom circle out her window.

Who the fuck was Princess Melodia?