A Solstice Journey Page 4

  “More like him,” I muttered. If a couple was infertile, the issue was the man couldn’t have children and not the woman that was usually blamed for the issue.

  Celyn ignored me and continued to talk. “She is his heir presumptive. We are both his sisters’ children, but Llinos is of his older sister, while I am of his younger.” He was silent for a moment and then sighed. “She will have children. It is well known that I have no interest in women. Our people want a stable line so they don’t have to worry about this in a generation. And since I will have no children, then there will be no one to challenge Llinos’s when they inherit.”

  “Well, kids aren’t for everyone,” I told him, seeing the guilty look on his face. “Though my sisters will have some. I know that none of them are interested in women that way.” I paused and looked him straight in the eye. “And neither am I.”

  He looked pleased but then got back to the reason Math was hiding us back here. “I cannot promise that you can go home.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, and he surprised me. Celyn kissed me, hot and needy, wrapping his arms around me to hold me tight as his tongue slipped into my mouth. I kissed him back after a moment of shock, holding his bottom tight and rubbing against him like a cat. He moaned in pleasure, backing me deeper into the alcove until my back hit a wall.

  We were both hard and needy, going from an argument to passion in the blink of an eye. I didn’t care about talking. I wanted his mouth around my cock, using his tongue in a different manner. I fumbled for a bit and then managed to slip my hands down his pants, discovering he wasn’t wearing anything underneath. His skin was smooth and hard-muscled, I discovered as I kneaded his bottom. We made out like a couple of teenagers, and I was ready to burst when he stopped.

  “Later,” he promised me huskily. “I didn’t know….”

  I didn’t let him continue talking. He was being a terrible tease if he wasn’t going to finish me right now. I slid my fingers closer to his crack, stroking the valley there as I searched for his opening. He moaned into my mouth when I found it. I wasn’t going to do anything so crass as forcing a finger into him, but I tickled him there, letting him squirm frantically against me.

  “I will spend…,” he told me, burying his face into my neck. “Later… later I will spend for you, when you are deep in me.”

  I didn’t get to say anything before I heard a subtle clearing of a throat from the mouth of the alcove. Celyn didn’t quite spring back, since my hands down his pants wouldn’t let him. But as soon as I removed them, he did move away a little. My cock wasn’t happy, but getting caught molesting Celyn had sort of embarrassed it into softening.

  “My Lord,” Celyn practically squeaked.

  I didn’t know what to say, but I bowed, glad it was dim enough that he might have not seen everything. If I kept telling myself that, it might be true.

  “Math isn’t a good chaperone,” the man said lightly, coming a little closer. He stopped when he saw me, a small frown on his face.

  “It just sort of happened,” I said weakly. I knew I was blushing. I felt like my parents—rather than a stranger—had caught me… us like this. I’d had it happen to me a couple of times in college, because my hormones usually outweighed my good sense then. I took comfort in the fact we still had all of our clothing on. It wasn’t much help, for some reason.

  The man was still staring at me, and I wondered if something was wrong, like I had lost my pants and didn’t realize it. I looked down, and I was still wearing them, so I looked back up at the newcomer, trying not to appear as confused as I felt.

  He looked older, in his late fifties, from the wrinkles on his face and the laugh lines that spread out from his eyes in an almost artful and delicate manner. His hair didn’t show any gray, but since it was almost white to begin with, that wasn’t a good indicator. He wore the same tunic and pants combination every other man was wearing, but even I could tell his tunic was made out of fine cotton or silk, the embroidery so fine that the threads looked whisper thin, made of different metals, gold, copper, and silver blending together in intricate designs. He’d be dazzling in full sunlight. I guessed this was King Idris, and he probably thought I was some cheap hustler taking advantage of Celyn.

  “I do apologize for my rudeness, my Lord,” I offered, bowing to him again. “I fear that I let my hormones… my feelings override my good sense.”

  “You have a talented tongue, Álfr,” Idris said with a smile. Okay, maybe he didn’t think I was cheap hustler. Just a slut. “And Bleddyn has told me how you were found.”

  “I thought that—” Celyn started.

  “Taking care of your guest was more important,” Idris said, with an odd pause on “guest,” like he’d almost said something else.

  Idris started to walk out of the alcove, leading us away. I was glad no one seemed to be paying any attention to us. It wasn’t in a studied way, just that all eyes were on Idris and Celyn, and I didn’t seem that important. As I passed Math curled up in a complicated cat ball, looking innocent in the way only cats can seem to pull off, I leaned over and whispered in her ear, “Some guard cat you are.”

  She flicked her ear at me, and it hurt a little when it hit me. I hurried to catch up, falling into stride with Celyn as Idris chitchatted with people on the way to his throne. It wasn’t anything more than a tall, heavily carved seat, but it was the only chair in the room.

  “Is he angry?” I asked Celyn quietly.

  “I don’t know,” Celyn replied softly. “But that wasn’t dignified.” He paused. “And not the first time he’s caught me like that.”

  I snickered. I wasn’t mad—neither one of us was virgins. I could tell from the way he had kissed me. And he wasn’t a slut, because I wasn’t getting that impression. I hoped he didn’t have that impression of me.

  “Wasn’t the first time for me, either,” I said anyway, so that he could laugh at me if he wanted. He did smile, at least.

  We didn’t get a chance to say anything else, because Idris had gotten to his throne and sat down. A hush fell over the room, and I was wondering what would happen next when I heard a loud pounding on a set of doors I had earlier thought were some sort of elaborate carving. It sounded like someone was hitting them with a sledgehammer.

  “What’s going on?” I asked Celyn.

  He frowned and looked disturbed. “Those doors haven’t been used in decades,” he told me. “Only the king of the Álfr is able use them.”

  That was confusing. Doors for people they were supposed to have some sort of treaty with, and they hadn’t talked to them in years? It wasn’t like this place was high tech, where they could phone each other, so the lack of communication made some sense. The technology here was hovering around fire for heating and candles for light, from what I had seen.

  The doors swung open dramatically, and for a wild second, I thought someone would ride in on a horse, waving a sword. What happened wasn’t as showy, but it was still impressive. A man walked in like he owned the place. He was wearing a light black cloak that streamed behind him, the hood covering his face in shadows. His tunic was longer, dress-length, and slit up the sides, and instead of pants, he was wearing what looked like tights. The colors of his tunic shifted into different shades of green as he walked forward. It had to be some weird trick of the light.

  He was alone, but no one said a word as he walked silently to Idris’s throne. When he came to a halt, he slid back his hood, and I just stared.

  I wouldn’t say I was looking at a mirror of myself, since that was too clichéd and odd. But at last I finally had seen someone I could say was one of my people. He was about a head shorter than me, and I briefly wondered if it was genetics or that I’d had a better diet. His long hair was pulled back into a handful of braids woven through with silver ribbons that picked up the gray in his hair. His face was young except for laugh lines around his eyes. I thought he must have laughed a lot because they were so deep.

  He didn’t say anything for a long
moment, apparently savoring the fact he was the center of attention. He and Idris watched each other before the newcomer bowed his head with a strange smirk on his face. He was skirting the edge of being disrespectful, but from the glint in Idris’s eyes, the Dökkálfar king was enjoying it too.

  “The snow told me that one of my people was here,” he announced. His voice was smooth and husky, and he had projected it so that it could be heard throughout the room. “But it is the Solstice, and all of me and mine are where they should be. And so I ask of you, Idris the White, who is the Álfr that is here? Is it my missing son?”

  Idris stood up and walked over to the other man. “Cathal, my old friend, one of my patrols found an Álfr wandering in the snow, lost and confused. But he claims to be menskr and not one of us.”

  Idris embraced Cathal for a moment before he continued. It sounded like this was some sort of odd stage play.

  “He was tired, and my sister’s son Celyn offered him the hospitality of his room.” Idris paused again, dramatically, and for a second, I thought both men were smirking at each other like they both had caught me and Celyn making out in that alcove. “I haven’t done more than exchange a handful of words with him. If he were your son, I would have sent you the information on the wings of the wind. But see for yourself if the one that Celyn rescued is your missing heir.”

  I was totally lost but stood my ground when Idris and Cathal turned, looked at me, and started walking toward me. Everyone here had called me an Álfr, and this man looked enough like me to be family, so he had to be looking for me, no matter how crazy that was.

  Cathal looked me up and down, studied me, and I freely admit I stared at him too. Close up, he looked more like me than I wanted to admit. His eyes were deep green, not blue, but he had the same nose I did, as well as the same shape of the eyes. If someone saw us on the street together, they wouldn’t hesitate to say we were close relatives.

  But I didn’t feel anything. Nothing deep within me called out that he was my father. As I had told Celyn earlier, I was menskr, no matter what they said, and anyone I wanted to claim as kin wasn’t in this room, but back in Iceland.

  A long, uncomfortable silence stretched heavily over the room. Cathal and I watched each other forever, I thought, but it seemed like time was going too quickly.

  “This is my son,” Cathal proclaimed proudly at the top of his lungs.

  I stared at the man in front of me, suddenly hurting. This was the wish of many adopted kids, to find out their parents were some sort of royalty. I will admit I’d had the same fantasy once in a while when I was angry as a child, that my birth parents were special or rich and would indulge my every whim. But once I got older, I realized that no matter what, my parents were the people who had raised me. They were the ones who had put up with me when I was a pain in the ass, when I almost flunked out of high school, when I told them I was gay. They hadn’t given birth to me, but they raised me.

  However… something was telling me that if I called home and told my mother that my birth parents were elves, they wouldn’t be surprised. I knew from talking to a lot of other adopted children that my adoption seemed a bit shady. I had thought they had gotten me from some Third World country where the government had more important things to worry about than correct paperwork. But I hadn’t thought that they might have stolen me from the elves. I started to laugh, because that usually wasn’t what happened in fairy tales.

  “You find this amusing?” Cathal demanded.

  “There are stories in my world from a lot of different countries about elves stealing children to raise as their own,” I explained, trying to be serious. “I just think it’s funny that my parents seem to have done the opposite.”

  “You know that you’re adopted?” he demanded. “That those menskr aren’t your birth parents?”

  I nodded, a little surprised he made the word menskr sound like a curse. “It wasn’t hard to figure out, since I don’t look like them.” I paused and stared him in the eyes. “I’m sorry. The people who raised me, Dagviður Feykirson and Brit Eyjadottor, are my parents. I had to explain this to Celyn too. They raised me, put up with all that you have to when you have children, and so I get to call them my parents.”

  He looked stunned. I felt bad, having this argument in a public place. The man had lost his son and then finds him decades later, only to hear that the people he had thought of as bad, people he had probably hated, were being called father and mother of his own son. I sighed. This wasn’t going to be easy.

  “When was your son born?” I asked. I could be the wrong age or born at the wrong time of the year….

  “At the turning of the leaves, during the late harvest of the apples,” Cathal said wistfully. “Three years and three decades ago. My poor Bébhinn died when you were born.”

  I felt the blood drain from my face—that was roughly when I was born. “What happened?”

  It felt like we were alone in the room, like we were alone in the universe as we talked. Cathal’s eyes went distant as he talked.

  “I don’t know what happened. I must confess that I was still hurt about your mother and left most of your care to nurses and others,” he started softly. “It was the winter Solstice. Over a year had passed since you were born, and you were walking. It had been snowing. All I know is that you and your nurse were playing, and then you were gone. In my grief and anger, I accused the Dökkálfar of the deed, even though you were promised to Idris’s heir. I’ve not stepped foot in their halls in over three decades because of your disappearance. I would have never guessed that you had the power to walk between the worlds at such a young age.”

  Cathal took a deep breath and continued. “Your name was Olcán. What did the menskr call you?” He made menskr sound like some sort of curse again. To him, it probably was.

  “Gunnar,” I said.

  Celyn stepped forward, sliding his arm around my waist. “We are honored by your visit,” he told Cathal.

  Cathal looked at Celyn’s arm and then at Idris, who shrugged.

  “Your son is a child of both worlds,” Celyn said. “He is your son, but as hurtful as it is to you, he is the son of their hearts.”

  “The menskr—” Cathal snarled.

  “Probably found me wandering somewhere,” I said firmly. “I don’t think that they actually stole me. They just sort of took me home and didn’t bother with looking for my parents. I was always told I was found wandering by myself. They were tourists, but they never told me where they were when it happened, just that they had found me. My mother always claimed I was an early Christmas gift for her. And they have never done anything to make me feel that wasn’t true.”

  Cathal watched me, clearly wanting to say something more, but I wouldn’t let him. I had pieced a few things together. My parents finding me was the start of them moving every couple of years, to places where it didn’t snow, probably so that I wouldn’t walk out of their lives the same way I walked in. They weren’t innocent here, but all I remembered was the love they had for me.

  “But unless you let me go home and talk to them, I’m never going to find that out,” I finished.

  Idris and Cathal glanced at each other. I could tell they had been friends, or at one time even closer than that, I was willing to say, from the looks they had been exchanging. But Cathal accusing Idris of having something to do with my disappearance had cooled that relationship, not to mention Idris still had a wife or wives for all I knew.

  “You can leave,” Cathal said tiredly.

  “It’s going to be the same day?” I asked, remembering a few more fairy stories I had heard growing up, like Tam Lin and Rip Van Winkle.

  “What do the menskr teach their children?” Celyn demanded. “It might not be the same day, but the day after.” He turned to Cathal and Idris. “Before that he was worried that eating food would force him to stay here.”

  Both kings looked at me like I was an idiot. “You’re lucky that anyone knows about elves,” I replied. They shoo
k their heads but didn’t comment.

  So, time ran the same way here as it did in my world. That made what I was going to say next a little easier.

  I looked at Cathal. “I know that you’re not happy. But I don’t want the people who raised me to have me disappear one day and not know what happened, so I don’t want to stay here.”

  I was being polite by not calling them my parents. I thought they would guess what had happened. The way my mother had acted earlier today now seemed to make more sense, but guessing wasn’t the same as knowing.

  “I also know that you are my father, even if it doesn’t feel like it to me,” I continued.

  Cathal nodded, looking hopeful.

  “I can stay here a few days, but I need to get back to my job,” I said.

  It was a compromise I hoped he would like. If not, I was hoping that he didn’t do something like lock me in a room. I glanced over at Celyn. Well, being locked in a room with him would be nice, but I still wanted to get back home. Celyn must have felt my interest, because he tightened the hold he had around my waist.

  “You are a prince of the Álfr!” Cathal exclaimed. “Your place is here.”

  “I don’t know here!” I shot back. “This is a big decision. I can’t just drop my life and come here and live in fairy land, even if I am one.”

  “You are—” Cathal started.

  “I told Celyn, and I’m telling you. I was raised menskr. I was raised with computers and cars, cell phones and electricity, none of which I see here. And what does being a prince mean? Do I go off and fight dragons? Rescue princesses? What do I do here? I have a job and a life that I love. If you’d given me this offer fifteen years ago, I’d have jumped at it. But now, not so much.” I took a deep breath and calmed down. “I don’t know you. And more importantly, you don’t know me. I might not be the son that you’re looking for.”

  “And what do you mean by that?” Cathal demanded.

  “I like men,” I said bluntly. “You’re not getting any grandchildren out of me, so I hope that you had other children.”