Horns for the Harem Girl (8 page)

“My daughter! Home!”

Running to her, her father openly let the tears run down his cheeks and embraced her. “I thought you weren’t allowed to leave. I thought we’d never see you again, I—wait, how did you get here in the first place?”

“The prince brought me,” she said, truthfully. “And we’re not allowed to leave, it’s just that there’s an emergency at the palace and everyone was sent away. I’m lucky to still have a home. Most of the women were put up in a hotel in the city.”

Helena was a little surprised at how easily her tongue told a series of lies to the man who raised her. Perhaps the harem life
was
rubbing off on her a little more than she realized with a shock of horror.

When he finally pulled away and she wasn’t buried in her father’s long, thick beard, she finally got a look at him. The past six months seemed to have aged him a decade or more. His full, normally round cheeks had hollowed. His eyes were further back in his head than she remembered, and were ringed with black circles. But he still had the same boisterous laugh and bright, honest smile that she remembered so fondly.

“Girls!” he called to her sisters. “Come quickly! Helly,” that’s what he called her, “is home on vacation from the palace!”

As the girls filed in, the first one, her sister Alara, noticed that she was covered in sand, and the second that she smelled a bit like an animal. She’d laughed that off. “We had to take horseback to get here,” she said. “There were fires in the city,” she didn’t bother to explain that the ibex who brought her here was the very one responsible for said fires, “and so the palace had to be evacuated for security reasons.”

If any of them disbelieved her, none made it clear by the way they looked at her or the way they embraced her.

“Alara!” her father finally said, with a loud clap of his hands. “Let’s celebrate!”

“With what?” Selene, the middle sister, said. “We’ve nothing to eat, and hardly any water left in the barrels.”

Flustered for a moment, her father looked back and forth before regaining his composure. “Well, with whatever we have! It doesn’t matter. The rains will come, the land will provide. Your sister is home and we’ll celebrate. Now, do as I say!”

With a grumble, two of the five girls rose to their feet and tromped off. “We haven’t even a goat to give us milk,” she heard one say as they went. “What are we supposed to—?”

A great crashing sound, from somewhere at the other end of the small house, interrupted her. “Papa!” Alara shouted, “come here!”

Helena and her father exchanged a quick glance before both got to their feet and went down the hall to find a goat with his head happily buried in the garbage can under the sink in the kitchen. The sink was running... which it had not done in quite some time, not since the well had gone dry and water had to be delivered by barrel.

“What is this?” he said in the animal’s direction. “My word,” he exhaled. “Look out there.”

This adventuresome fellow was not the only new addition to the family. In the pen which used to house camels, cattle, rams and goats, were all those things – which hadn’t been present for years. Not only that, but huge bales of dried grass had been deposited all around, and the water tanks were not only replenished, but new and enormous.

“What in the world?”

Her father’s mouth hanging open, Helena smiled and shook her head.
Turning into an ibex is one thing, but replenishing a family’s farm with more than they ever had before? That’s more than magic
.

“Helena?” Her father was tapping her shoulder as she was lost in thought. “This... all came with you? How did we not hear? How did you not wake us in the night?”

The truth was she didn’t have any idea. Moreover, she hadn’t a clue when all this had appeared or how it had been transported. In truth she barely even believed that what she knew happened the night before happened at all. But the proof was right in front of her, braying and chewing on an empty juice carton.

“I guess we can celebrate,” Alara said, smiling despite her normally sour demeanor. “And I guess having a sister in the harem has more advantages than just being rid of a sister,” Alara’s twin, Jatala, said. They shared a demeanor, but not a voice. Jatala’s was higher and more nasal than that of her sister.

Clapping again, her father ordered the girls to get a goat, and prepare a feast, while he himself sat down and took a long, happy drink from the cold water that squirted out of the spigot when he turned the handle. “I don’t know how, or why, we’ve been so blessed. But when you see the prince next, thank him for us. I’m sure this is his doing,” her father said.

“I will,” Helena said with a wistful smile. “Next time I see him,
if
I see him again, I’ll thank him for all of us.”

*

T
wo days came and went, spent in gorging themselves and laughing. Along with the animals and the water tanks had come great big barrels – two of them, one of wine and one of beer. Her sisters and she shared the wine, but the beer was all for her father. Apparently.

After the first night, he swore over and over that he’d never drink again, but on the second night of the unexpected feast, he was back at it, singing and laughing and hooting like the old days. A handful of friends joined in the second night, and for the first time in her life, Helena was invited to the party that lasted until dawn came and the men and all of her sisters had to sadly disband to sleep, or work, or go back to wherever it was they needed to go.

It wasn’t so much that she was home – although that was certainly part of it – no one could believe the fortune that her father and sisters had somehow fallen into. At the same time, no one seemed to question it, or her connection to the prince, and why a royal would deign to do so much for a girl who was really just as common as common came.

That is, until they all woke up on the third day to find the family’s cellar filled with preserves and salted lamb, pork and goat.

“Either you have a djinn watching your back, or you have managed to get in good with someone very rich, sister,” Alara said, ever doubtful of anything slightly unbelievable. “Which is it? And you know that no one’s seen a djinn in the kingdom for at least a hundred years, so I doubt they made an appearance just for you. What have you done?”

Helena, still half asleep, just frowned and looked at her sister for a moment, trying to decide how much malice there was in her question. Whether or not it was there wasn’t the issue. With Alara, there was
always
malice in her questions.

“Why are you so sour?” Helena asked.

“I’m not, I’m just concerned. News came of the fires in the city. I know you told Papa that the harem was evacuated because of some emergency, but you didn’t bother listing the reasons
for
the fires. So either a djinn set them, giving you a holiday from the harem, or something else is afoot. And since djinns aren’t usually known for delivering people on the back of a horse and then delivering entire herds of livestock without,” she paused, “I don’t know, stealing a baby or something, I’m guessing it’s something different.”

Helena exhaled a long puff of air, blowing the long tendrils of curled brown hair out of her face, and with it, any semblance of civility. “What does it matter?” she asked with a curl of her lip. “We have food, you and father and mother get to enjoy life a little more, have less worry. And all you can do is act skeptical and jealous?”

“Jealous? Oh sister, you don’t know the first thing about me if you think this is jealousy. I’m worried that you’ve got us all into something with your impish, childlike stupidity.” Alara bit her lip. “That was a little stronger than I meant to come across.”

Her anger boiled inside her for a moment before Helena had to admit, first to herself and then to her skeptical sister, that maybe there was something to that worry. She still felt like she had to defend herself, her decision, but for some reason, she didn’t bother. She knew that with Alara, she was as transparent as a plate of glass.

“I don’t know,” she finally said. “It all happened so fast that I never had time to think, I just listened to my heart. It was going a lot faster than my brain had time to adjust to.”

Alara smiled. “So it’s the djinn, then?”

Helena laughed. For all their differences, she and the decidedly bossier one of the twins had always shared a special bond. Alara was reserved, analytical and intellectual. Helena was... none of those things. Her heart drove the bus, her mind often played second, third, or sometimes fourth, fiddle.

“Sometimes it feels like he’s a djinn,” Helena said. “What with the secret meetings, the schemes and the plotting. I don’t know, it all just seems so exciting and wonderful. And oh my, the way he kisses, the way he smiles and touches me,” she drew a breath, “I can’t—“

“You’re
intimate
?”

“Well,” Helena said, slightly blushing. “I suppose I—“

“You and a djinn have been
intimate
?”

Helena sighed a deeply held breath, laughing on the tail end of it. “Oh Alara, you always were a jackass. Me and the prince.
I have been with a prince
,” she hissed. “Well, sort of, he was insistent that we save the most special for, well, he kept saying that he was going to save it so he could do it right.”

Alara shook her head. “My first time involved the stable boy from down the way, and straw that smelled like camels. Yours involves a prince who is willing to keep his desires in check and some kind of lavish rose petals in the bath seduction? Anyway, how do you manage to be in the harem for six months and still have this be your first time?”

Now, Helena was blushing as fully crimson as dawn had been six hours earlier. With a bashful smile, she looked down at her toes. “Well, I’ve been training more than anything. Haven’t had much time for, er, extracurricular activities. And the king is very set in his ways. He’s got his favorites and he sticks to them. And before I was in the palace, you know how reserved and demure I am.”

At that, Alara snorted a laugh. “By that you mean that as the family’s baby, Papa always watched you closer than he did anyone else.”

“Well, that too,” Helena said. “But you’re right about the fires. I wasn’t entirely honest.”

“Listen to me, sister,” Alara said, drawn up close to her baby sister. “Whatever has happened, whatever trouble you’ve got us in, or got yourself in, I’m sure it’ll all work out.”

A heavy sigh escaped Helena’s lips. “That’s what he says. And that’s what Maret – she’s my mentor in the harem, and apparently the prince’s mother – says. I don’t know why I can’t have the same optimism.”

“Because you haven’t spent your life in a sequestered palace full of cushions, hookahs, and court jesters. They
do
have those, right? Fools that entertain the king? And the prince, isn’t he some kind of regional governor? Where’s his land? Certainly not out in the middle of a wasteland desert, is it?”

Helena shook her head. “I don’t know, to be honest. I’ve only rarely been to court. I’m not a favorite, or experienced at all, so I spent most of my time entertaining at the feasting hall attending to the partying dignitaries.”

“I don’t know how you do it,” Alara said. “I wouldn’t be able to keep my nose out of all the intrigues were I in your position. There’s so much to poke around in, so much trouble and gossip to find.”

And here is where her sister finally got excited. She got giddy at the idea of news, secrets, and all other sorts of things she wasn’t supposed to know. Helena watched her sister’s face for a moment, studying her expression. “I only know one secret. Well, two, really.”

Alara’s eyes lit up. “Aside from the fact that the prince is waging a war with his father?”

“That’s not exactly secret.”

“True, the enormous fires and the armies kind of gave that away I suppose.”

“Well, you know how I said the prince is the son of my mentor? And not fully royal?”

Alara sat forward, edging up to the end of the bench where she was sitting. “I’m listening,” she said with wide open eyes and excitement in her voice. The thing about being all analytical and intellectual is that she couldn’t get enough tidbits of news, gossip, whatever you wanted to call it. If it was there, Alara wanted all of it. “Although princes are often born to harem women, as I understand it.”

“Well, it’s true, in a way. Often kings bear sons on harem women. But, not before they become king, and not with her not being his first wife.”

“Oh this
is
good. How is he the heir, then?”

“Maret was, is, I mean, the king’s favorite. She’s his confidant, his best friend. If not for the fact that she was born a commoner, they’d probably have married and Arad would be legitimate. So it’s all very secretive. People in the kingdom think he’s the product of the king’s late great wife. If they knew about the whole commoner thing... well, there is more than one reason that he’s fighting this war.”

“But it does make it romantic, doesn’t it?” She asked. “Gives him such credibility among the rabble. That’s what they call us, you know.”

“Arad doesn’t,” Helena felt her face growing hotter. “His father maybe, the others at court, for certain. But the prince? He’s a kind man who would never do anything of that sort.”

“Calm down, sis,” Alara said. “I’m sure he’s perfectly gentle and kind and wonderful. But you have to admit, it is a little strange that he’d fall head over heels in love with a commoner he’s only known... what, a few days?”

“Weeks,” Helena said, not for the first time realizing how ridiculous the whole thing was. “But his mother – Maret – who I’d expect knows him very well, says he’s never done anything like this. She said she’s been trying to get him to go after this freedom fight for years and years, but he always refuses. Until now.”

“Hmm,” Alara mumbled. “The prince has his own confidant, doesn’t he? An Englishman? Stork or something?”

“Crane,” Helena stifled a laugh. “He’s very stiff and strange. Maret says he’s a lush and a letch.”

“Well he
is
English,”Alara said with a haughty grin. When Helena didn’t respond in any way, she just kept talking. “Anyway, I’m worried that you’re being suckered into something you don’t understand because this ridiculous war smells of royal gamesmanship and posturing. What’s he going to do if he wins?”