Forest Seclusion

Forest Seclusion

A Supposed Crimes Anthology

Smashwords Edition

Supposed Crimes LLC, Matthews, North Carolina

Copyright 2017

All Rights Reserved by Authors

Published in the United States

ISBN: 978-1-944591-43-4

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Included Stories

White Deer by Jess Martin

Curses, shape-shifting, and shrimp fairies: welcome to Jess’s version of Madame d’Aulnoy’s fairy tale where she gender-bends the cursed creation, takes liberty with the hero’s tale, and finds a princess who isn’t in a rush to get rescued.

Snow White by Christina Rosso

When Snow White's father brings home Nadene, her new step-mother, the princess has doubts about the girl's ability to be a queen and mother, but what Snow White never expects is to fall in love with her.

The Tree of Wisdom by Dale Cameron Lowry

A curse cast on Prince Florian makes love a dangerous enterprise. But when he meets animal whisperer Olvir, he falls willingly.

If Only You Were Someone Else by Jennifer Loring

A changeling is willing to risk everything to discover who and what s/he really is--especially when s/he falls for a human male.

Heaven Scent by Chantal Boudreau

A highly sensual retelling of Rapunzel from an insider's perspective.

White Deer

Jess Martin

A punishment shouldn’t bring so much joy. Yet when the sun illuminated Faith’s human shape initiating her transformation into a deer, pleasure radiated through the cursed princess. Cloaked in an ethereal white coat, Faith marveled at the silver antlers that rose anew each dawn from where her father had once placed her mother’s crown on her head. He teased her then as a father does, declaring, one day, you will be the queen of every soul that looks upon you.

Stag or doe, Faith wondered why the curse warped her into a creature that was neither one nor the other. But then, fairies that wove magical spells as easily as tapestries were not often called upon to explain their rationale.

As the story was told to Faith, the Well Fairy issued her fateful words on the day of Faith’s christening: the princess should never see the sun before her eighteenth birthday or else an unnamed doom would befall her. Faith’s mother blanketed the child’s head and retreated to the castle’s deepest keep. Faith’s father constructed a magnificent underground palace that he staffed with the kindest and most talented of tradesfolk and teachers. Faith’s sentence banished them all from the light, but as a family, they found a way to make a new world, which would allow them to bear the years of darkness to come.

Faith never wanted for sunlight. Grand rooms carved in the stony earth were painted in an array of vivid colors. Footmen lit thousands of candles every hour, adorning the caverns in a subterranean glow that burned and bounced about in flickering delight. The smell of wax and flame became the aroma of home.

On the year of her eighteenth birthday, Faith noticed a palpable change in the atmosphere of the underground palace. Though no one dared show any unease with the nontraditional accommodations, Faith noticed the growing excitement for the day of her release into the world above. Faith avoided any discussion about that long awaited day. She clung to the darkness around her like a well-worn cape. Candlelight cast shadowy figures that enticed her imagination, and if she ever wished to avoid an argument with her mother or a teacher, Faith crawled away into her labyrinth of secreted wormholes. There, she chiseled her own chambers and often found her way to them without a light to guide her. The dark, like a kind friend tugging her ahead, led her deeper into the earth to a place where she could feel completely safe.

She couldn’t avoid the march of time, and no hiding place could keep her birthday from arriving. Her father busied himself with restoring the neglected palace that towered above their current home. Her mother commissioned artisans to paint a portrait of Faith. The king found the painting so pleasing that he had copies sent across the land as he prepared for Faith’s entry into the over-world. He invited royal families across the neighboring territories to a reception to welcome his daughter to the land where seasons dwelled.

Not a month before the happy day, however, a large retinue arrived in Faith’s homeland. Messengers relayed that the impressive party took three days to enter the kingdom. A young man dressed in the finest regalia bore a purple banner emblazoned with two brilliant gold arrows that crossed in an X. When he spoke, he brushed aside the curled auburn hair from his face and introduced himself as Lord Converse, an emissary sent by King Warlock.

When the name of Warlock was mentioned, it traveled the underground kingdom as quickly as any echo. It had only been a year since the young ruler had inherited the throne from his well-regarded father. The new king was the subject of many discussions as his every move was weighed and analyzed. Not only did Warlock rule over the large port city where all trade gravitated to, but he also oversaw a fleet of warships and an army five times the size of any known to the people in Faith’s home. He had already proven his ambition by leading that army in a successful battle to take the southern lands that had so long vexed his family line. Warlock wanted only for a queen, and Warlock had received Faith’s portrait.

On behalf of the warrior king, Converse urged, cajoled and then as much as quietly threatened Faith’s parents to permit the princess to travel overland to his master’s kingdom. As Converse put it, this would be Faith’s opportunity to prove her eligibility to be Warlock’s queen.

Faith’s mother met Lord Converse’s gaze and explained the Well Fairy’s curse to him. You have but only a scant month to tell your kind lord to wait, surely he can grant us this time as a show of his pure intentions, the queen spoke with as much honey as she could will into her tone.

Lord Converse had heard the strange tale of the curse on his journey to this quaint and backward kingdom. He allowed for some eccentricities of these simpler country folk with their charming beliefs in a world of magic and fairies, but he would not be deterred by superstitious nonsense. He steeled himself for his next words, coughing gently into his chest to alleviate the weight of the stale air that hung about him.

My King’s heart suffers greatly for a queen, and His Majesty accepts no compromise once he has set himself on his course. This makes him an exceptional lord, as I’m sure you agree. Upon hearing about the princess’ condition, I had my men construct a carriage as impenetrable to light as this very unusual castle. The princess will not come to any harm as she makes but a week’s journey hence. Converse clapped his hands loudly to cue the spectacle to come. The ancient oak doors of the court were pushed as wide as they would open. Thirty men dressed in sleek decorated purple uniforms lumbered into the court, carrying the carriage on long boards that rested on their broad shoulders.

The message was clear. There was only one response expected: capitulation. Faith’s parents surrendered to the twist destiny had set before them. While Faith’s father ensured that the courtiers installed Faith in the carriage under the light of a full moon, her mother recruited her most trusted Lady-in-Waiting, Lady Weed, and Lady Weed’s two daughters, Prickly and Daisy, to join Faith in the journey.

Fate beckoned the curse despite every effort Faith’s parents made, and Lady Weed stood perfectly poised to encourage the arrival of Faith’s doom. Lady Weed had earned her place at the queen’s side through flattery and manipulation, plotting her rise to royal status. Her years of deception finally appeared to have its reward close at hand with the arrival of Lord Converse. This journey gave her the opportunity to put her eldest daughter before King Warlock in the princess’ place.

Lady Weed had ensured that no one outside the court had ever seen the princess, aside from that ill-conceived portrait. It was a common enough practice, Lady Weed convinced herself, that royals exaggerated their own beauty, and Prickly’s unassuming visage could be explained away to King Warlock with a few flattering turns of phrases. Lady Weed trusted her way with words when it came to royalty. She folded a knife deep into her skirts as she boarded her two daughters into the carriage and swore a false oath to protect the princess.

Faith had never traveled beyond the confines of her palace, even when night offered reprieve from the curse. Her parents had practiced caution in this respect. After all, couldn’t fairies summon daylight with but a few words? Despite this, Faith felt the change of territory as the carriage hobbled over the well-traveled road that led toward the sea. Daisy, her truest friend, sat next to her, arm entwined in Faith’s as a comfort, whispering stories of imagined landscape they could not see from the dark confines of the carriage. Five days passed, and Faith recalled from her studies of these lands that they would enter the hunting grounds of King Warlock. Her homeland behind her, the rich scent of fir and summer heat filled the carriage.

If Faith had not been restricted to the gentler arts of science and literature, if she had been trained in the art of battle, she might have known how to react when she saw the glint of steel. The blade in Lady Weed’s hand sliced through the carriage of shadows as she slashed at the heavy curtains. Instead, Faith sat stupidly to the side, avoiding the blade’s edge and wondering at Prickly’s cackling laugh that had always irritated her so.

What bright warm light filled Faith’s eyes! Her heart felt the larger for it, and her very flesh responded to the sensation of this orb’s life-giving heat. This was sunlight, she thought, so this is that element she had only read about. Too late, Daisy raised her cloak to cover Faith from the light that tickled over her form. Faith’s fate fluttered in on soft waves of light only to land with a sharp and heavy pain that shook her body out of the carriage.