East

Troll Queen

IT BEGAN DURING MY FIRST journey to the green lands. The joy that seemed to steal my breath forever. And the knowing-I-must-have or I would perish.

He was a boy then. Playing a game with other children. A round red ball they threw back and forth. Laughing. He and the other children left, then he came back to find the ball, alone. Sweet, fortuitous miracle. I could have willed it so, with my arts, but was too dazzled, unthinking.

His eyesight must have been better than most softskins', for he saw me. Or perhaps that was because of my arts, used even without my knowing. I wanted him to see me.

He ran up to me. His face was so strange, with its curling-up mouth showing white teeth, and his bright green-blue eyes. He held out the ball and said, "Would you like to play?"

That is when it began, the strange breath-losing feeling. The wanting.

And so I took him. Not then, that day. But later.

My father's rage was immense. He said I had broken all the laws of our people, the most ancient, the most binding of laws.

I tried to explain to him the way I had done it, so that none of his people knew I had taken him. It was very clever, ingenious. But it was not enough, and my father set up an enchantment. Binding. And with conditions.

I hated it but could not change it. My father was still more powerful than me then. It could not be undone. Even now it cannot.

The conditions were intended as punishment, for breaking the ancient laws, but my father also wove in the opportunity for me to have that which I desired. And once the conditions were met, then the softskin boy would be mine. Forever.