Currency
Title: Currency
Fandom: Original
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: none
Summary: How much is your journey worth?
Notes: Written for the January week 2 mini-contest at brigits_flame, theme “passage.” I had some fun with this one-I hope you enjoy it! As always, comments and constructive criticism are welcomed and appreciated!
…
“We do not take money at this stall.” She pushed the coins back toward him.
“No? What will you take?”
“…I could take the color of your hair,” she said, “or all of your memories before you were three years of age. I could take the hearing from your left ear-not all of it, just enough that you’d not enjoy music or appreciate the soughing of the wind...Or a kiss from you. One kiss, here on my cheek.”
- Neil Gaiman, Stardust
…
In a dream, on a stormy night in August, she promises to find him.
“It won’t be easy,” Simon warns her from his bed, a world away. “And it won’t be safe.”
“Safe is for girls who don’t want adventures,” she tells him. She wants to reach through the walls of her dream-cloud and into his, to hold his hand, to touch him. “I’ll find you,” she says. “I’ll rescue you.”
For a moment, Simon looks scared. A little bit nervous. Worried for her, she wonders, or for himself? But then he smiles at her, slow and sweet.
“I’ll be waiting,” he says, and she wakes.
…
She starts out on foot.
It’s hot and muggy, the air still damp with the remnants of last night’s rainstorm. She adjusts her bag on her shoulder and trudges up the road, away from her village. Away from home.
A cart rattles up beside her, drawn by two horses and driven by an old elf. He draws to a stop and smiles down at her, revealing a wide mouth with a few missing teeth. “Going north, young miss?”
“To Arya,” she says, looking up at him. “I’m going to find my friend.”
“Arya, eh?” The elf raises scraggly eyebrows at her. “Long journey from someone as young as you, and even longer on foot. Come on up, let me give you a ride.”
Without hesitation, she hands him her bag and clambers up beside him. “I can pay you,” she says. “I have a bit of money.”
The elf snorts. “Money’s no good here,” he tells her.
“Then how can I pay you?”
The elf looks thoughtful. “Raspberries,” he says.
She blinks. “Raspberries?”
“The taste of raspberries,” he clarifies. “I’ve heard about them, but I’ve never tasted them. That’s the cost of your ride, young miss-the taste of raspberries.”
“Oh,” she says. She thinks about it. She’s never liked raspberries. “Yes, all right.”
The elf touches her lips with one gnarled finger. Her tongue tingles. “There we are,” he announces, drawing back and snapping the reins. “I can take you as far as the Buck Port,” he says. “Shall I know your name, if we’re to be traveling?”
“Miyara,” she says. Her tongue feels strange in her mouth.
…
At the Port, she bids farewell to the elf and finds a ship heading north over the Winding Sea. The captain is a tall, fair-haired woman with arching eyebrows and a sword at her hip, fuzzy fox ears poking through her blonde hair, and eyes Miyara suspiciously when she asks for passage.
“Bit young to be seeking yer fortune ’cross the Sea, ain’t you?” The Captain looks doubtfully down at her.
“I’m looking for someone,” Miyara tells her. “A prince.”
The Captain laughs. “Ain’t we all, lass, ain’t we all. I’ll wish you luck, but I’ve no room on the Spinner.”
“I don’t take up much room,” Miyara insists.
The Captain eyes her. “No, I don’t imagine you do.” She rests one hand on her sword hilt, the other on her hip. “It’ll cost you,” she says after a moment.
Miyara nods, and the Captain reaches out a hand, puts it in front of Miyara’s mouth. Miyara feels her lungs go empty, and stumbles back, looking up at her. “What-what did you take?”
“Just a breath, lass.” The Captain winks at her, cupping her hands and whistling sharply. Another woman, shorter and plumper than the Captain, appears at her elbow with a jar, and the Captain pours the breath into it. The woman caps the jar and the Captain turns back to Miyara. “Good for the sails,” she explains, and offers Miyara her arm. “Welcome aboard the Fablespinner, miss.”
…
The first mate is a pretty young elf with wide hips and a cheerful smile. She offers Miyara a pallet on the floor of her cabin, but is often never there, coming back from the Captain’s cabin most mornings with mussed hair and a secretive wink playing around her eyes.
On their eighth day at sea, Miyara asks her a question.
“Swordplay?” Annalise raises one perfect eyebrow. “What’s a nice girl like you looking to learn swordplay for?”
“I’ve got to rescue someone.”
Annalise smiles. “A princess locked away in a tower?”
“A prince, actually,” Miyara says. Annalise laughs.
“A prince locked away in a tower! I quite like that.” She stands up and picks up her sword, and then takes a spare from under her bunk, holding it out.
Miyara takes it. It’s heavy in her hands, heavier than she expected. “What’s the fee?” she asks curiously.
“For the sword, or the lessons?”
“Both.”
Annalise looks thoughtful. “A lullaby,” she says finally. “Your first lullaby, in your mother’s voice.”
Miyara looks down at the sword in her hands. She remembers her mother’s smile hovering over her cradle, the image of her tiny fingers wrapped around her mother’s thumb. Quietly, she sings of home and homesickness, of love and loss, of mothers and children. The words flow and fall, and when the song is over, Annalise is quiet.
“It’s very sad,” she says after a moment. “I wasn’t expecting that. Lullabies aren’t usually sad.”
“Was it?” Miyara closes her eyes, trying to recall the tune or the words. “I can’t remember.”
…
The Fablespinner sets into port in Arya in the early hours of the morning, her bow cutting through the fog rising from the water. Miyara hugs the Captain and Annalise goodbye and steps down from the gangplank. She has a sword on her hip and a faint hint of unsteadiness in her step, her feet still accustomed to the constant sway of the ship.
Despite the early hour, the port is bustling with the dawn fish market, and for a moment Miyara simply stands still, unsure of where to go next.
“Are you lost, missy?”
She looks down to see a young boy tugging at her sleeve. “Not lost,” she tells him. “Just a bit directionally challenged.”
The boy laughs. “Where are you going? I can help you, maybe.”
“To the City.”
He frowns. “That’s a very long walk, miss.” His brow furrows, and then his face brightens. “My mistress is going to the City tomorrow! You could come with us, maybe. I’d like to have someone to talk to.”
Miyara hesitates. “Your mistress?”
“A great sorceress,” he says excitedly. “In service to the Queen.”
The Queen is Simon’s mother, keeping him captive in the Palace. Miyara suppresses her smile at finding a way in. “I think I’d like to meet your mistress,” she says, and the boy grins.
…
Jimi’s mistress is an old faerie with deep lines around her eyes and mouth. She is blind and bent, and traces her fingertips over Miyara’s face when Jimi presents her.
“You’ve journeyed very far,” she says in a voice that seems much younger than she is. “And it has cost you dearly.”
Miyara shakes her head. “It hasn’t cost so much.”
“No?” The faerie tilts her head very slightly to one side, regarding Miyara with sightless eyes. “Tell me, child-your mother’s lullaby. How does it begin?”
“I…”
The faerie does not pull her hands away. “You’re very young, child. And very daring. This thing you plan to do-to take a son from his mother, even one so corrupt as the Queen-it is very dangerous. Are you sure it is worth the risk, for this boy you love?”
She doesn’t know how the faerie knows. She does know about the desperation and fear in Simon’s eyes, the way he’d reached for her when his mother had dragged him away, the worry in his voice when he’d spoken to her in a dream.
“Yes,” she whispers. “It’s worth it.”
For a long moment, the faerie is silent. “Then I shall help you,” she says. “For a price.”
Miyara feels her temples tingle, and then the sensation fades. “What did you take?”
The faerie pulls her hands back. “It doesn’t matter,” she says. “You won’t miss it.”
…
Two weeks later, she walks into Simon’s tower.
He’s sitting on his bed, one ankle still chained to the wall. He looks up at her when she enters, his eyes wide with surprise and cautious excitement. “Miyara?”
She smiles, crossing the room and kneeling on the bed beside him. “Hi, Simon.”
“But-I don’t understand. You’re really here?” He stares at her, watching in silent awe as she pulls a pin from her pocket and slips it into the lock of his chain. “When did you learn to pick locks?”
“On the ship over here,” she says. “It cost me the color of my eyes.”
His hand slips into her hair and then curls under her chin, gently forcing her to look up at him. “They’re not as blue,” he whispers. He looks worried. “What did you give up, Miya? What did it cost you to get here?”
“The taste of raspberries,” she tells him. “A breath of fresh air, and my mother’s first lullaby. The color of my eyes, my third memory, and,” the lock clicks free and she holds up her left hand, wriggling her fingers, “the feeling in my pinky finger.” Simon look stricken and Miyara smiles, pulling the cuff off his ankle and holds out her hands for his. “And it was all worth it,” she says. “I promise.”
Simon hesitates, and then smiles, slow and genuine. “I just can’t believe you’re really here. That you really came.”
“I’m really here.” She takes his hands and pulls him to his feet. “Come on. We need to go.”
“But my mother-”
“Asleep.” A gift from Yelliba, Jimi’s mistress. True love, she’d said, is worth losing a commission, even one from a Queen. She pulls him to the window and cups her hands around her mouth, blowing into her fingers. A small cloud wisps into form and she climbs through the window, settling herself on it. Seeing Simon’s shocked face, she holds out her hand. “Can I offer you safe passage to freedom, your highness?”
Simon climbs up onto the windowsill, then puts his hand into hers and lets her help him onto the cloud. He wobbles unsteadily, then finds his balance, looking at her curiously. “What will it cost?”
“For the journey, or the happily ever after?”
Her tone his teasing, and he smiles. “For both.”
“In that case,” she says, taking his hands again, “I think I’ll take your first kiss.”