The Fairy King and his Cursed Queen ✔

15 | PROPER FIGHT

I was still young when I'd died. Only twenty-four, though I'd felt a million. Many perished for riches, honor, adventure. I'd died for a pig. And not a very big one. A pig I'd stolen but tripped and fallen with. My hunger and desperation gave me the strength to pick that animal up, but not enough to keep it in my grasp when I'd fallen face first in the mud.

Too bad that wasn't the only bit of bad luck.

As I staggered to my feet that faithful night, it was by a window. I'd peered in to see a husband and wife in the throes...but they were not married to one another.

My attempt at fleeing didn't get me much more than a headstone branding me a horse thief.

It was the lie of it that stung. For years, I'd go back to that farm as a fairy and then I'd visit my grave. Then the farm, and back again. And not once had I sought my revenge.

I did not need to.

The woman died in childbirth some years later and the man, having turned to the drink, abandoned by his proper wife, aged and wallowed alone in his misery as his feeble mind slowly turned to dust.

Would anyone believe that I'd buried the bastard with my own two hands...? I had. Under the pigsty.

Despite my loathing for him, I had not brought his end, because Manoj's guidance as I went to my gravesite and then that farm and back again was simple—patience. Patience and life. Because the living could feel pain; the dead could not.

A day after I'd buried my killer, the first fairy queen joined me on the fence. Our small size afforded us a perfect perch and an even better view.

"It's good that you follow Manoj's teachings."

I hadn't realized then that a tree would be the most apt creature to employ patience. My eyes settled on the village beyond that dingy road leading away from us.

The first fairy queen had yet to find love and I my bloodlust. I was still weak—I hadn't even had it in me to end the man who, naked, ran down a half-starved vagabond and bashed him—bashed me in the head. All to keep his own impropriety secret. Then to tell all far and wide that I'd been a horse thief....

"We should burn this entire village."

A sudden laugh left the fairy queen but I did not understand why. She looked at me, doubtful, and I assured her, "I'm serious."

"Yes. I know. But ask yourself why. You'd be no better than that man you've buried."

Her words hurt me. "How can you say this? Manoj needs souls; I say we give them souls."

Elbows on her knees, she studied me. "It is good that you keep Manoj in mind. But do not use him as an excuse to try to answer your regrets. You could not kill this man," she explained, "so now you will kill others in an effort to answer that call for revenge. This does come off rather weak."

Crossed, I matched her posture but refused to look at her.

Most of the day was eaten up by the time she spoke again. "This is not Manoj's first world. He's been to others. Do you know that he doesn't know how he came to be? Only that one day he was? And his first world did not keep balance well. The creatures there didn't look like humans at all. Instead of two hands, they had six. They walked upright and they talked. But there was no one to protect Manoj or his kind when they began to rip the trees from the ground. Eventually, there was but a wasteland and all that remained of Manoj and his kind was a single seed. So Manoj floated until he found land again and regrew. That new world was already near dead once he became aware of it. And then finally, he reached here."