Chương 4: Chapter 4: Bright Blood-Red
I noticed the stars in the sky before I noticed the stretch of cacti, trees, and mountain ranges in the near distance, lantern lights obscured by the flowering foliage.
As we got closer I realized they weren’t lanterns - they were the flowers themselves, warmly glowing.
The sand hardened to dirt the further we went. Rowan drove the skoolie through a woodsy canyon between mountain walls, to what looked like a small music festival without music. Tents and hammocks sat scattered in different groupings throughout the rocky landscape.
The first to notice us was a teenager, who ran alongside the bus and called to the woods until a group of excited children was chasing us. Adults watched from their different fire pits. Some stood like content mountain goats atop tall towers of stacked boulders.
As Rowan pulled the bus aside the path and opened the door, the children crowded outside, voices high with overlapping questions.
“Give him a chance to breathe!” an old woman scolded over them. “Remember what I told you about those who return from the Land of Night?”
“There’s a pretty lady with him!” squealed a little girl.
“Enough! Shoo!”
The children dispersed with different calls of, “Bye, Your Highness!” “Welcome back!” “Can you tuck me in later?” “Will you tell us a story first?”
“Shoo!” the old woman cried again. The last of the children giggled and ran, revealing the old woman who was too short to be seen just a moment prior. Her thick gray hair was tied back in a series of coarse braids, beads and dried flowers woven within. Like the rest of the encampment, her attire similarly matched a pirate’s - a hodgepodge of expensive taste mixed with whatever allowed the most freedom of movement.
She sighed, then smiled at the king. “Welcome back, Your Highness.” She curtsied. Her eyes met mine. “And hello, new stranger.”
“Good evening, Sophie,” Rowan replied, smiling weakly. Blood had dried on his shirt, not obvious over the black material and low light, but I knew to look for it.
“What do you need first?” Sophie asked.
Rowan leaned back in his seat, letting his hands fall from the steering wheel and the door lever. “A shower and a good cry.”
Sophie solemnly nodded, no questions asked.
Rowan added, “Do get Scarlet situated. We have a gentleman in the back as well, but he’s rather shy. I didn’t get his name. Oh, this is Scarlet.”
I meekly waved.
Sophie smiled at me again. “Of course,” she said to the king. “I’ll send Trevor this way. He’s good with the quiet ones.” She gestured for me to step down from the bus before adding for him, “We’ll be at the banquet fire when you’re ready.”
The king nodded. “Thank you.”
Sophie led me away, taking my arm in hers. “I hadn’t heard anything about a wedding,” she said when the skoolie was some feet behind us. “Will it be soon?”
“Wedding?” I asked.
Noting my confusion, she asked, “Are you not the king’s bride?”
My mouth fell open with a lack of response. I didn’t think we looked like a couple. He didn’t introduce me as his fiance.
“Ah, forgive me,” she said. “It started as a rumor some years ago - could be considered an old legend by now - that a beautiful bride with red hair awaited the Crimson King in the Land of Night. But I don’t think that’s why he searches it the way he does. He’s been doing that since before the rumors started.”
“I see.”
Replaying our first meeting in my mind, I thought he seemed a little nervous. At the time I assumed it was madness and nothing more, but now I assumed it was paired with polite attraction and the anxious need to make a good and genuine first impression. In retrospect it was cute.
My mind sprang irrationally far into a nonexistent future and, in less time than it could’ve taken me to comprehend it, I worried about developing feelings and complicating the Ivory Kingdom’s plan. While I wouldn’t have minded seeing the Ivory Court fail, I had friends I wanted to see again, and Tulip.
I shook my head back to the present. The concern of a crush was irrational. I just met this man, and nothing was more important than seeing my chosen family again.
I offhandedly considered how the Ivory Kingdom wouldn’t necessarily have to kill Rowan to take his throne. There was the chance this could be solved amicably. But what king wouldn’t fight to the death for his crown?
I was still getting ahead of myself.
“Are you hungry?” Sophie asked. “We can do the tour first, or food. Your choice.”
Wanting to eat with the king, I answered, “I can do a tour first.” Regardless of any feelings I had for him - which I didn’t have - I still had to seduce him, and seducing him required spending time together.
Sophie showed me around, the walk slow and easy. The children didn’t try to bombard me the way they did Rowan, but they watched me from a respectful distance.
Sophie told me they, a population of roughly three hundred people, had rigged their own showers from a series of wells, built secluded outhouses, and some of them had taken apart their tents to repurpose them for more structurally stable huts. They grew their own food, and hunted. I noted some interesting art installations of nature and found objects.
“And the king found all of these people?” I asked, awed.
Sophie chuckled kindly. “No, not all of us. But, not including the children, I’d say he found…” She twisted her mouth at the sky, thinking, and still smiling. “…half of us in the Land of Night.” She returned her gaze forward and continued the walk. “At first we all tried living within the Crimson Kingdom, but after being out here, that way of life stopped making sense to us.”
“How do you mean?”
“The constant racing to achievement, the pressure to perform, the stress, the judgement…” She shook her head, as if at a distasteful memory. “Out here, we’re free to simply ‘be.’ Of course, this isn’t for everyone. I get the impression you’d like to return to the Crimson Kingdom with His Majesty.”
Wondering if this was a judgement of my character, or said under the assumption I wished to wed Rowan, I asked, “What makes you say that?”
“You didn’t lose your wits for long before the king found you, yes?”
I didn’t know if any response would incriminate me with unforeseeable consequences, but my startled stare likely said more than I intended it to. When could Rowan have told her about me? Did he doubt I had lost my wits as I had pretended to?
Sophie chuckled. “I can tell. You would understand a lot of what you see here if you had the full experience, or if you were predisposed. It would excite you. But you just look confused.” She laughed, shaking her head.
Lastly, she led me to the banquet fire - a line of fire pits set up between two fireproofed tables, acting as a poor man’s long hibachi table. Rowan wasn’t there yet, but his seat was ready for him at the head of a separate table from the long two, sitting on the short side of the line of fires.
Sophie led me to the seat directly to his right. When I noticed the shy stranger from the skoolie eating at a different table, there was no doubt in my mind that Sophie was playing matchmaker.
Rowan arrived some minutes later, just as our spit roasted mystery animal finished cooking. He hugged his red cloak around himself, looking like a very tall college student who had left his bed for a snack. His curly black hair sat in wet ringlets atop his head, pressed down by his crown so they nearly met his eyes.
He didn’t seem surprised to see where they sat me. “They think we’re betrothed,” he guessed.
“Sophie knows we aren’t,” I answered casually.
He stood beside his seat and tapped his fork to his goblet until enough of the surrounding civilians watched him. He projected his voice. “You all know I don’t do unnecessary speeches, so don’t worry, this isn't that, but a quick announcement.” He cleared his thought. "I ‘just' met this woman.” Finished, he waved in dismissal and said, "As you were.”
“Are you getting married?” a little girl yelled back. Her giggles mixed with the others’ laughter, telling me she had intended this to be as funny as it was.
Rowan smirked, no apparent stranger to a friendly heckle. “I might one day take a bride, yes.”
“If you won’t take her, can I?” called an old man with a frail voice.
“That isn’t my business, but good luck.”
Laughter sprinkled the banquet crowd. Rowan took his seat, and everyone returned to their business. I didn’t realize I openly stared at him until he glanced at me and appeared startled.
“What?” he asked.
I smiled and looked away. I didn’t know why I was smiling, but I had to stop.
As I ate, I chanced a glance in his direction, and he happened to look at me at the same time.
“What?” he asked again, a near-laugh in his voice.
The nervous urge to smile wider had me struggle to keep my food in my mouth, so I held my hand over my lips and turned away as a precaution, laughing through my nose as I tried to stop.
“Don’t look at me,” I managed after I swallowed. I refused to meet his gaze and see what face he wore.
With a smile in his voice, he replied, “As you wish.” And, of course, he triggered my thing for 90s romance leads in medieval times settings. Had he even seen that movie?
This wasn’t good. This was crush vibes.
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