The Fairy Letters: A FROST Series(TM) Novel by Kailin Gow

that mark the edge of our known world. Your love
will give my wings the strength to bear us both – as a poet in your land once
said - “beyond the sunset.” This hope keeps me alive – it is this hope, and not
the snowflake pendant that dangles so uselessly from my neck – that sustains
me.
    Goodnight,
my love.
     
     

 
    Letter 15
     
     
    My Dearest
Breena,
    I
can bear it no longer! Enough – I feel my body cry aloud in despair – enough! I
thought I could deal with my sorrow by writing you these letters, telling you
stories – regaling you with tales from our shared past and from the fairy
history we share. I thought that if I could only share with you my inmost self
– the myths I grew up on, the memories I have of my mother and my father, the
moment we first kissed – I could somehow join you, be by your side in some way.
But it is not to be! I have given you all of myself in my words, and yet I hear
no answer from you. At first I thought you were merely being prudent – I
imagined you in my mind's eye (for I thought it was telepathy – perhaps it is
only a trick of my fevered brain) reading each of my long-pored-over letters,
pressing them to your lips, scenting them with your sweet perfume, and locking
them away in a hidden drawer all your own. I imagined that you read each letter
each night before going to sleep, pressing them to your breast, even (did my
mind deceive me?) placing them under your pillow. I imagined that these letters
were like food to you – that receiving them sustained you even as writing them
kept me alive, kept me sane. I imagined that you wrote me letters, not fearing
to send them lest some treacherous courtier in your palace intercept them and
let the public know of your affection for me. That was the only response that
my mind could come up with to explain your silence – a silence that borders on
cruelty.
    It
has been three months and I have heard nothing from you. Not a word – not a
stroke or an iota – and your silence is more agonizing than the mythical Fires
of Landau. Indeed, I would gladly bathe in the scalding flames, anoint my angry
heart with lava, if it would mean a moment's distraction from the pain your
absence has caused me. What has happened, Breena? I know – rationally – that
this cannot be any trick or intention on your part. You would never willingly hurt
me– I know that well. And yet this pain has become so great that my letters
alone cannot bear it, cannot ferry it away from me. I have become so thin,
Breena, that you would not recognize me! My cheeks are pale and hollow – the
bones like the blades of swords. My eyes are ferocious with lack of sleep; my
heart groans and I cannot take food or merriment, because you own too much of
the world around me. You own the sounds of music (for they remind me of the
fairy waltz!) and the taste of fruit (for they remind me of the nectar we sucked
together in the orchards of the Summer Court in our youth). You own laughter
(for when I hear it I think of the tinkling sound of your voice) and believe me
– Breena – you own my tears. There is nothing in this palace – this palace so
great that it would take two days to pass through all its rooms and corridors –
that does not make me think of you, and so my thoughts are bound and shackled,
tortured on the rack, by the very absence of the torturer.
    What
agony is this – when she who causes me agony is the only thing that can bring
about its relief? I thought I knew pain when my father died, when I buried him
in the warrior's way, and read the ancient verses of Rosenbush over his body.
But it was nothing compared to this. With the death of my father, his absence
signified something greater – his tragedy had in it the beauty of sacrifice.
And so it meant something, and so it had meaning – I could think back
upon his life and see in it a single unity, a snake eating its own tail – he
was a brave man, a great warrior, and in his death he was all of those