Horns for the Harem Girl (7 page)

“What’s all this, then?” she asked as her feet stopped clomping over old concrete and instead squished down on deliciously thick rug. “Some kind of meet...ing... oh God, what have I walked into?”

Crane was stalking around the room with his arms crossed behind his back, there were nine other men sitting around a large conference table, and Arad was beaming. And Helena realized with a terrible shock that she’d just broken about the most important rule of the harem – not only had she been fraternizing with the prince...

She was in a room full of men, outside the harem, completely uncovered.

“My veil!” she said, covering her face with her hands. In honesty the whole veil business was fairly new for her, since living on a subsistence farm left very little time for all that sort of thing.

“What you just stepped into,” Arad said, taking Helena’s hands and lowering them. “Is a new world. Old things going away, new things taking their place. Or, I guess, new
old
things, as the case may be. These are my lieutenants.”

Crane nodded to her and touched his forehead with a couple of fingers in an almost mocking salute. The others seated around the table just grumbled. A couple of them looked at her for a moment and then went about their hushed chattering.

“All for you,” Arad said. “Well, mostly for you. A lot of it is for the people, and all of it has been a long time coming.”

“You’re... serious,” Helena said, suddenly feeling faint. “You’re starting a war.”

He nodded.

“You’re starting... a...”

“War, yes,” Crane finished. “And we need to know whether or not the harem backs the king. So, you’re going to find out for us.”

“I’m not a spy,” Helena said, her face sagging. “I wouldn’t even know where to start. I’m...”

“Gonna have to figure it out,” Arad said. “But you won’t be alone. Maret is already aware of the plans and—”

A chime sounded. A small clanging sound that drew the attention of everyone in the room. “Speaking of, there she is. Time for you to go, love,” Arad said, pulling her aside and sneering at everyone else until they looked away. “I won’t let anything happen to you, I promise. When this starts, I’ll take you to safety, but for now, go!”

The door opened and he pushed her through. A hand clasped hers, dry and papery. She immediately recognized the old woman’s touch. “Come on, dear,” she said. “Whatever my son said, he’ll do.”

T
he fires came before word did.

There were seven of them at first, seven lights in the distance that broke the blackness surrounding Salomana’s palace like flashlights erupting from the woods. When Helena saw the first of them, she couldn’t believe her eyes.

Two days of whispers and sidelong glances preceded the fires, but no one really believed they’d come. Least of all Helena herself. Out of her window, she watched the second spring up and then the third. She recognized the locations – armories, sure to explode... that is, unless they’d already been looted. The girl tried to convince herself she had nothing to do with all of it, but she knew deep down what was happening. Arad had lit those fires to overthrow a tyrant. At least, that was the version he’d tell his supporters.

Really? He’d started the fires for
her
.

He’d promised that if a war with his father, a war against the old ways, was the only possibility for their being together, he’d do it. He must’ve talked to his father, and they must, Helena thought, not have come to a pleasing agreement.

Her stomach turned, and then seemed to knot up around a stone the size of a softball that had settled in the pit of her gut. “Why this way?” she asked the cold, night air of the desert. “Why did it come to this?”

“Love does stupid things, child,” Maret—who she hadn’t heard enter—said. “And I believe now that he loves you as he says he does. I never thought I’d hear myself say this about our prince, but... there it is. The man’s started a war for your heart, and you have to get the hell out of here before the king’s men come for you.

“But why?” Helena protested, rightly. “I’m a woman of the harem – a simple commoner at that. How could I possibly make a prince do my bidding? It’s ridiculous! I told him
not
to do this!”

“Like I said, child,” Maret said with a smile snaking across her lips. “Men in love do stupid things. And unfortunately, this one is in a position of incredible power. You mightn’t have said for him to do anything, but it doesn’t matter. He did it, and you’re in the midst. But, listen to me,” Maret placed her hand on Helena’s shoulder, which was noticeably shaking.

“I’m afraid,” the girl admitted, her voice so low it was barely an audible whisper. “I’m afraid for myself and for him... and for my family and the kingdom.”

“Don’t worry about all that,” Maret said, squeezing her shoulder. “The king may be a drunkard, and he may be unpredictable, and slightly despotic, but he’s not going to go after your family. He’ll not even bother to go after you if you’re out of the palace.”

Helena swallowed hard, her throat clicking as she did. “I’m stuck here though. We can’t drive, we can’t even leave the grounds.”

“I’ve arranged something, come quickly. Leave your things. I have a feeling this is all going to blow over before it hits the point where we need to worry about the palace burning to the ground.”

Without a thought, Helena turned and cinched her robe closed. “But what about my veil and the outfit? What if—“

“Child, you’re running from the king in the middle of what seems to be a revolution. I think the last thing you need to concern yourself with are the trappings of the regime presently being burned to the ground.”

There was a wry smile on the old woman’s thin, dry lips. Helena spared a half-second to study her face, and thought it was almost like she’d been waiting for this moment to come. “You’re happy about this, aren’t you?” Helena dared to ask. When there was no immediate response, she apologized.

“No, no,” Maret said. “You’re right to ask. I remember a time before veils, before the strange whims of this king, or the one before him. You don’t, of course, and probably your parents don’t either. But there were times when women of the harem came and went as we pleased. We travelled with the king, we travelled alone if we wished. We could marry and have families... but that all changed when I was young.”

“That’s awful,” Helena said, not really understanding what all that meant. “It must have been very confusing.”

“No, not really.” A smile creased the old woman’s tattooed face. “You can only be confused if you have to make decisions. In that way, it was very comfortable. Choice is difficult, freedom is hard. Being told what to do and simply following orders? That’s as easy as the mid-summer day is long.”

The old woman looked at a new fire, which sprung up near the wall inside the palace compound. The orange light flickered in her watery eyes. “This has been a long time coming, even if the reason for it is slightly less noble than to free the captured souls of this kingdom.”

“Love isn’t noble?” Helena asked as she opened her desk and removed the mirror and her journal, before wrapping them both in silk cloths and depositing them into a low-slung shoulder bag. “I think it’s the noblest thing.”

“The young always do,” Maret said. “You and the prince will have many years to grow tired of each other, I think. But that’s just the musing of a romantic old fool. Right now, you have to get out of here before things get too hot.”

She snorted. “Fires, you see? Hot?”

“Very good,” Helena said with a laugh of her own. Even if it was short-lived it felt good to do. “But how am I going to get out of here?”

Maret tilted her head toward the window. “As I said, this kingdom holds many... strange secrets. Your prince has come.”

Of all the bizarre things to see presented in front of her, Helena found a grand ibex – it stood tall enough that the tips of his huge, curled horns were visible without looking down. “A... Arad?” she asked, her whispered voice belying her disbelief. “Horns?”

The ram narrowed his eyes and let out a mighty snort into the cold, night air. Billows of steam erupted from his nostrils, and when Helena stuck her hand out the window, her fingertips met a velvety coat on his snout. “You turn into... an ibex?”

“Many secrets older than the oldest humans here,” Maret said, pushing Helena toward the window. “Go on, child, he’ll take you to safety and then return for what he has to do here. Go!”

Lifting a leg, Helena felt unsteady and fearful. She’d never ridden a camel without her father guiding the reins. And this – she’d heard legends about the royal family having strange, magical blood – but she could hardly get her legs around either side of the beast prince’s massive ribcage. Regardless, she slid out of the window at Maret’s urging, and perched atop the huge back. The ibex snorted again, and Maret turned her head.

“Hum, he says you need to trust him. Let down your legs and squeeze his sides. Take hold of the hair on his neck.”

“You can understand him? I wish I could,” Helena said.

The ibex turned his head back to her and nuzzled ever so gently in the crook of her neck.

“You will,” Maret said. “In time. But for now, just trust what I say. Go with my son, he may be the king’s heir, but he’s not his child. I know his heart, and in time so will you. Now go, and never look back until the flames are gone and the world is new.”

Astonished, and unable to process anything she’d just been told, Helena grasped tightly onto the coarse hair on the prince’s ibex neck. She squeezed him as tightly as she could with her knees, but still almost toppled off him when he wheeled around sharply and sped off.

“Ah!” she shouted. “You awful brute! I’m hardly holding on!”

“Grab... tighter,” a pained voice came. The sounds weren’t quite right, but then again, they’d come from an ibex’s mouth. It must not be all that easy to make human sounds with an animal mouth, Helena thought. He bucked slightly, pitching her forward.

The girl’s arms naturally went around either side of the great neck. When she lay flat on him, she found that she fit better, and far less awkwardly than when she was sitting up. “I think I’ll stay like this,” she whispered into his ear, hugging his muscular neck tightly and letting the scent of her prince flood her nose. “I’ll stay right like this my prince, for as long as you’ll let me.”

“Half the night,” he said with a voice that was similar to the one with which Helena was familiar, but with a few peculiar twists to his words. “You stay with your family, enjoy your time. I’ll be back before you know it,” he nuzzled her hand. “I swear it.”

A tear rolled out of her eye, down her cheek and vanished into the fur on her prince’s neck. “Why me?” she whispered as his trot became a fierce gallop. “Why did you choose me?”

He made a sound that reminded her of an awkward laugh. “Because of all the women I’ve ever seen, you’re the only one I fell in love with before I saw her naked.”

His bold honesty struck Helena as hilarious and raw and vulnerable; three things she’d never particularly seen in the prince during their brief, secret courtship. “I’ve felt you through your clothes,” she said into his ear. “I’ve got a fairly good idea of what
you’ll
look like.”

It was his turn to laugh. The laugh of an ibex is like a whinny mixed with a neigh mixed with a sharp exhalation. After he made the sound, he kicked his hind legs into the air and reared his forelegs high off the ground. “An ibex wheelie,” Helena giggled. “Of all the things to encounter, this is possibly the last one I ever imagined.”

“Wheelie. No... hoofy?”

He laughed again and sped across the parched ground, a cloud rising up in his wake. That was when Helena realized they’d encountered no guards, they’d not even encountered an abandoned checkpoint. “How did we get out so easily?”

“Blew up the wall. The first fire was a bomb making a hole for us to escape. This has been planned since long before you and I met. I just never wanted any part of it. My mother – Maret,” the prince said, “she gave me up when the king took power. She’s wanted revenge ever since.”

“You’re... hers?” Helena said, her voice distant with wonderment. “It makes sense though; you both have such good hearts. You never reminded me very much of the king, I have to admit.”

“He’s a good man, but a bad ruler. He
is
my father, but I’m a bastard. He and Maret cavorted back in the days when
his
father had the throne. Which is probably why she’s so understanding about our little predicament. But anyway, I’d never be part of her plan because I didn’t want the trouble.”

“Trouble?”

“Of fighting. Of possibly dying. Of not spending my days running wild and my nights feasting and drinking and carrying on. I never got to the point I wanted to settle down and I...” He trailed off.

“You what?”

“I never found a woman I loved enough to risk all that for,” he said simply.

She hugged him, tighter than before. “I love you too,” she said into his ear.

Another rearing of his forelegs, then another kick of the back ones. They fell silent as the desert vanished underfoot and the stars blazed in the millions above their heads. Out in the utter pitch blackness, there was nothing to stop their brilliant shining, nothing to get in the way of basking in the beauty of the infinite.

Helena looked back and watched the palace burn.

That’s when she realized that she’d understood what the prince was saying perfectly. She felt his words, she knew his heart.

Sliding a hand around the front of his neck, she felt the thump of his heart beating against her, and flattened her cheek against the hard, thick muscles in the prince’s ibex neck. She held fast, and he ran faster.

For all their differences, just then, they were one.

––––––––

“H
e... Helena? How are you... why are you here? And what in the world is this?”

Her father’s voice roused Helena from a slumber that felt like it had lasted a month. She rolled over, popped her back and her shoulders and her hips as she always had and then instinctively recoiled, covering herself... even though she was wearing a full, and very modest, set of pajamas.