An Imperfect Princess (11 page)

“That’s just a
lightning bug!” the earl said, slamming his hand on his desk. “There is no such
thing as fairies!

“No it’s not a
bug,” Eneria said softly and looked down at the frantic child.  “She’s a fairy,
and her name is Aijo.”

“Great.  Just
excellent.”  The earl put his head in his hands and pulled at his face,
suddenly looking tired.  “I have a mad thief with a pet lightning bug under my
roof.”

“I’m not a
lightning bug!” Aijo called in her tinny voice.  The earl stared at the corner
of the room, his face frozen as he heard the voice of his conscience from a few
days prior.  “I’m a Pharinae of the planet Lathlor, and Eneria is not a mad
thief! She is a princess!”

 Marilyn’s
struggles ceased, and Eneria let her go.  The earl now looked as if he had
received a physical blow, and he leaned heavily against the desk.  “Talking
lightning bugs...”

Eneria held her
breath.  Perhaps this was the breakthrough she needed to convince him that her
story was true.

“I have had a
very, very long day.”  He closed his eyes for a long moment and pinched the
bridge of his nose. When he opened them, he was back in control.  Eneria had to
admire him for not losing his composure completely, but she was a little
disappointed that he’d rather question his own sanity than believe her
outright.

“Marilyn, go to
your room and do not come to lunch. Mrs. Thomas will eat with you.  Miss
Eneria, please also go to your room and rest.  You obviously are out of sorts
with reality.  And I,” he said, dropping down heavily into his chair, “am going
to have a drink and try to get my own thoughts on this situation sorted out.”

“Eneria is just
fine!”  Aijo said, but the earl pretended not to hear her.

“Please also
cease this ventriloquism at once, Miss Eneria.”

Enny held up a
finger, and Aijo took the cue to alight upon it as if she were a butterfly, her
slender wings opening and closing.  Marilyn breathed in silent awe as Eneria
held Aijo in front of her face, where the child could see her tiny
features–features of a humanoid on a much smaller scale.

“I do not know
what that word ventrilo
—
what
that word is or means, but I suspect you are still calling me a liar.”  She
started to leave the study, but then stopped.  She still had one more chance of
convincing him.  “Actually, my lord, I came to ask for your permission to
return to my ship.  Would you like to accompany me after lunch? Perhaps it will
answer some of your questions.”  She coughed.  “And assure you of both our
sanity.”  She lifted Aijo toward him, offering him a closer look as well.

The earl studied
the tiny creature resting on her finger, who was smaller than the digit she
rested upon.  Aijo preened, tossing her translucent golden hair over her
shoulder and intentionally emitting extra sparkles for added effect.

“That’s a
fairy,” he said flatly.  “A mythical creature.  It does not exist.”

“Oh, I can
assure you, they exist, and they far outnumber beings made of ordinary matter
like us.”  Eneria smiled.  “You are a scientist, are you not, my lord?  But I
imagine the science used for the Pharinae has yet to be invented.  I do not
know the words to describe them.”

“They don’t
exist in this language,” Aijo the linguist confirmed.  “Not yet.”

“Aijo is how I
learned to speak your tongue so quickly.  Some of their talents are rapid
language acquisition and telepathy with other beings.” 

“There’s no such
thing as magic...” he argued weakly.

Aijo scoffed,
speaking for herself.  “Of course not.  Magic is make believe.  I’m just
another form of matter, that’s all.”

“Let us go to
the ship,” Eneria repeated firmly, settling Aijo onto her hair like an ornament. 
“I do not think it will answer your questions, but it will prove some of my
story, I hope.”  She held her hand on her flat belly, looking a little
chagrined.  “But after lunch please.  I’m famished.”

“Mitsy will have
lunch ready for you in the guest room,” he said, his hands still covering his
forehead.  “I’m going to have another drink, myself.”

James was still
in shock. 

Just a few hours
ago, he had been ready to toss the lying thief out on her ear, so sure was he
of the deception.  And now, not only was he to believe her a princess from
another planet–a planet around another star, no less
—
but that the large lightning bug in her hair was a fairy.

Granted, he’d
never seen a lightning bug that was shaped like a human, he thought as he
escorted the “princess” through the front door. 

Absurd, he kept
telling himself.

“I’m not shaped
like a human,” the tinny voice said from the direction of the woman’s head. 
Aijo, she had said the fairy’s name was.  “Humans are shaped like us.”

“The Pharinae
populated the galaxy millions of years ago,” Eneria explained without
prompting.  “On green worlds such as this, if there was a suitable being, they
sculpted them to be the same general shape.”  She turned around to face him,
and he was once again caught by how attractive she was.   Her brown hair had
been twisted into an up-sweep, with a few wisps escaping.  In the dull, cloudy
afternoon light, the bluish highlights were gone.  It seemed they were merely a
trick of the light.

“So you’re
saying that God is a fairy?” he countered.

“The Pharinae
don’t wish to be worshiped.”  She twirled back around.  The gash on her
forehead had faded to an angry, scabbed over bruise, and she was obviously in
high spirits at the prospect of returning to her crashed boat.  “Although many
primitive worlds do worship them, at least at first, they eventually form a
mutually beneficial partnership instead.”

“Absurd,” he
repeated to himself again.  But still, he followed her down the cliffs and
helped her remove the oilcloth that had been placed over the small vessel.

None of them had
been able to figure out how to get in.  He had pulled her out from the glass
enclosure in the front, but there did not seem to be any other obvious
entrance.  The gaping hole in the side was too small for entry, and the surface
was so slippery they could not climb up it.

She whistled
when she saw the damage.  One of the fins was broken off the back. “Yes, that
was a nasty crash, on top of a nasty hit from the Konkastians.”  She lovingly
stroked the intact pane next to the shattered window.  “It broke transparent
concrete.”

“No, it didn’t,”
Aijo corrected from her perch in Eneria’s hair.  “I had to
melt
that. 
It took me almost an hour.”

He didn’t even
want to ask what they were talking about.  He was too busy looking at the
vehicle she claimed came from another world.

The princess
placed her hand on a recessed panel on the outside of the ship.  He stood,
mouth agape, as the panel glowed around her hand and then melted into a handle
shape.  She grasped the handle and yanked hard.  The entire wall of the vessel
folded back onto itself. It melted and smoothed away the gash in the side, and then
shimmered to reveal a door that had been hidden before.

“Smart plastic,”
she explained, and she touched the side of the ship where the hole had been
moments before.  “Whenever you hit debris in outer space, you can’t risk losing
the airtight seal.  The inner seal held in this case, so the ship’s emergency
systems didn’t kick in, and it waited until it assumed it was in port. 
Normally the gap would have healed when someone opened it from the inside.”

She stepped
inside carefully, and he felt he had no choice but to follow.  The floor of the
vessel was about a foot higher on the inside, and he saw strange tubes and
wires running along the inside of the doorway.

“It’s a bit
cramped,” she warned, as he was unable to stand completely and found himself
crouching. Her own head brushed the ceiling, with her hair piled up as it was.

There was
nothing familiar inside the ship.  The floor was covered in a rough carpeting. 
The walls and ceiling were made out of beautifully polished wood. The entire
thing was no larger than eight feet across and perhaps double that in length. 
Two comfortable looking seats were in the front half, and he saw the gaping
hole in the windshield where he had pulled her out.  The dash itself was
covered with brass knobs and buttons and large black fields that looked more
foreign and alien than he could possibly describe.

She sat in one
of the black leather chairs, her borrowed dress at odds with her surroundings. 
He noticed suddenly how ill-fitting it was, her bosom nearly spilling out over
the top.  He forced himself to tear his eyes away from that vision and focus on
the wonders of the ship itself.

She put on the
goggles he had returned to her and pressed a small button on them.  A small
light began blinking on the side.  He wondered what the source of it was.

“This was my
family’s private limousine ship,” she said, her fingers dancing across the
dash, pressing buttons that were labeled in a totally unrecognizable script. 
“After the coup, it was my only possession.  My mother and my cousin cannot use
it on Montares, so it was entrusted to me.  I pulled out the extra seats and
installed the desk and bed you can see in the back.  For the last two years I
have smuggled gemstones out of Konkastian territory for resale. Aha! Got it
started.”

And with that,
the vessel came to life.

More lights
glowed, with no obvious candle source.  A strange humming sound came from the
back.  The black fields on the dashboard started showing pictures and the
strange woman at the helm of this terrifying ship was grinning from ear to ear,
with a mythical fairy sitting in her hair.

“There’s no such
thing as magic,” he repeated, clutching his head.  He should never have come
out here. He should have locked her in her room and locked himself in the
basement and ignored all her requests to visit the ship.  “Are you a witch or a
demon?”

“You poor man,”
Eneria said, and stood up from her seat.  “This has probably been a horribly
disturbing day.”  She reached out to touch his arm, only to offer comfort. 
However, neither of them was prepared for the rush of electricity that arced
between them.

She recoiled as
if burned and stared at her hand in disbelief.

He had the
instinct to do the same.  It was their first physical contact since she had
regained consciousness.  He was not prepared for the sensation of being touched
affecting him so much. 

He was very
definitely
going mad.

She recovered
admirably, straightening up in her borrowed dress and saying brightly, “I am
going to grab some things and repair the hole in the windshield and the
steering fin.  As it stands, this ship is in no shape to fly.  But if you will
cooperate with me, perhaps I can repair it.”  She ticked off on her fingers. 
“I will need a source of electricity, a generator of some sort.  Would you
happen to know what I am speaking of?”

He had to shake
his head.  Electricity was still poorly understood even by the scientists of
the Royal Society.  Why was this girl babbling on about it?

“Well, a
generator powered by the human body is not so hard to create,” she said,
clearly disappointed.  “It is simple technology, even inasmuch as this ship is
advanced technology. Perhaps I will help you as much as you can help me.”  She
walked to the back of the shuttle and opened a drawer, from which she took a
block of something clear and something that looked suspiciously like a weapon.

“You may have a
seat, my lord,” she said, and then pointed to the chair in front of the intact
portion of the windshield.   He did as she said, feeling out of sorts and
completely useless.  Who was he to argue with a crazy space witch?  She slipped
on a pair of strange, shiny gloves. “This should not take too long.  Aijo?”

“Yeah, yeah,”
the fairy said as she fluttered up from her hair where she had been watching
the conversation with avid interest.  With the aid of the fairy and the strange
looking gun, she held the block of clear stuff against the missing square. 
Before his eyes, the block of stuff grew a shiny red, and she fashioned it into
a patch.  In a few moments, the red glow dimmed and there was solid glass where
the shattered hole had been.

“And you say
this is not magic, but merely technology?” he said softly, as she peeled off
the gloves. 

“You said it
yourself, there is no such thing as magic.”  She held up one of the translucent
gloves.  “These gloves are made from a substance that transmits no heat or
electricity or any energy of any kind.  You could plunge your hand in a fire
and feel fine.”  She held up the tiny pistol.  “This is a heat gun.  It
transmits directed energy at a target to warm it up.  The windshield is just a
crystalline cement, which is also heat resistant and somewhat shatter
resistant, although apparently not enough.”  She coughed wryly.

“So,” he said
slowly, still trying to wrap his mind around the paradox of the woman beside
him.  “The world you come from is more advanced than we are?”

“By leaps and
bounds, although your world may not be too far away from traveling through
space.  Badyor’s theory of civilization puts preliminary space travel within
200 years of steam power.  You
do
have steam power, I could tell that
much just from the coal you’re burning.”

He thought of
the smokestacks of the manufacturing plants now dotting the London skyline. 
“Yes, that is something we have.” 

She smiled then,
that brilliant smile that seemed to light her from within.  He caught his
breath.  Either they were both barking mad or she really was a princess from
another world.  When she smiled, he could quite possibly believe anything she
told him.

He’d heard of
women who were scientists in their own right. There were the math girls of
Cambridge, of course, and the extended family members of fellows and professors
of the university.  However, he did not have much contact with them outside of
the pub.  Some of the girls at the Eagle Pub could even carry on a decent
conversation regarding the subjects outside of mathematics, and he had
sometimes felt that the university did them a disservice by not allowing any of
them in directly.

But in the end,
those conversations were merely a courtship dance.  They were more interested
in catching the well-to-do students than they were in the pursuit of scientific
advancement.

“I need your
help then, my lord,” she said, taking his hand.

He was shocked
at the intimate gesture and the tingly sensation it caused.  Perhaps in her
world the contact was appropriate.  Here it was not.  Or maybe it was.  Nothing
felt wrong with it at all. She made it difficult for him to think properly.

He was surprised
again, however, by the tingle from the simple contact.  It was the same as
before. 

James had done
his fair share of wenching as a student at Cambridge, although he had been more
careful and circumspect than some fellows from his college, who had no need to
worry about young ladies after family fortunes and titles.   He had been
unfortunately celibate these last few years, forcing himself to act as a good
role model for the young ladies in his care. He was intimately familiar with
women–the way they responded to a kiss, a caress, a whisper.

Never, ever, in
any relationship he had had with a woman, had he felt burned by her very touch
and seen her respond so plainly to the burning as well.  

Maybe this was a
symptom of their shared malady.

Mitsy’s old,
outdated dress fit her poorly, he noted again, trying to keep his eyes off her
expansive décolletage.  She had more generous curves than the young maid, and
while they had done some emergency alterations, it still did not quite fit
properly.  The shawl she had covering her shoulders had slipped, exposing a
good deal more bosom than was fashionable–or proper.  They should have looked
further for a better fitting dress from the downstairs servants.

Finally, after a
few more moments of mental floundering, he realized that he was actually
attracted
to her.  That explained the odd tingling.  Just this morning she had been a
mysterious patient who could be a thief and here he was going and being attracted
to her.  He really was going mad!

If she noticed
him trying to avert his eyes from the swell of her bosom peeking from beneath
the shawl, she said nothing about it, instead going on about her dilemma.

“Will you help
me contact my cousin?  Vazeria d’Tar is the only person that can rescue me at
this point. If you believe the pendant I was wearing is valuable, then I can
pay for the materials I’ll need.”  She stood up again, letting go of his hand,
and walking to the back of the shuttle.  He was keenly disappointed at the loss
of the contact and found himself staring at her, willing her to come back so he
could touch her once more. She hauled down a small box from a shelf above the
desk and set it on what appeared to be a flat plank she pulled out from
underneath.  Except the plank floated above the ground.

“More
technology?” he said, wondering when her astonishing story was going to end. He
joined her in the back of the cramped shuttle.

“Well, the
grav-sled is not for sale.  But the contents of the box can be.”  She held her
index finger on a black oval and after a few moments the box atop the sled
beeped in recognition and opened.

He drew in his
breath.  Gold and silver ingots were stacked neatly inside.  Small, translucent
bags were piled beside them and he could tell they were full of raw gemstones.

“If you
are
a thief, I have to say you are a successful one,” he heard himself saying.

“I told you, I’m
a merchant,” she countered.  “I have four more boxes like this one. These were
all paid for up front, free and clear.  This world values precious gems and
metals, yes?”