“I find that unlikely.”

  “I am afraid you will hold me to a promise I made to you.”

  “Has it been three months?”

  “You know it has.” She moved to a chair, but then she pulled it closer. She sat, and then she rested both her feet on my bare back.

  “No,” I said. “If you’re going to do that, take off the sandals first.”

  “Do it for me.” She set her feet back on the floor. Without even looking, I released the buckles and eased them from her feet, setting them aside. A moment later, she set them back atop me.

  “Much better,” I said.

  “Why do you let me do this?”

  “I am your harem slave, Khaleesi. What choices do I have?”

  She shoved my shoulder with one foot, but then used the other to keep me where I was. I could have risen, but I obeyed the nudge.

  “I’m scared, Snow Dove,” she said, her voice ragged. “I want you to stay there. I want you to sit here, together, with me.”

  “I can’t do both.”

  “While you’re down there…”

  “Yes?”

  “Kneeling keeps you submissive.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “Yes. You trained yourself quite well.”

  “A beating did that, Khaleesi.”

  She pushed me with a foot, then withdrew. “Do what you want.”

  “I will.” I moved forward, capturing her feet and pulling them to the floor. She didn’t fight me, and I slowly kissed, one and the other. And then I ducked underneath so she had little choice but to put her feet atop my back again.

  “You are very confusing.”

  “I have been learning from the best.”

  “I am afraid.”

  “You keep saying that.”

  “You could have stopped kneeling to me months ago.”

  “Until we dine in Paris, and I can walk away, I remain your harem slave,” I said. “And I will act like it.”

  “When it suits you.”

  “If you don’t care for my behavior, you shouldn’t have forced me onto your council, and you could have kept me muted. Everything is your own fault.”

  “You truly are vexing.”

  “It is a gift.”

  She nudged with her foot. I never quite knew what she meant by it. Perhaps she was simply acknowledging she didn’t know how to counter my words. They were my weapon of choice, after all.

  “Please don’t leave.” I slipped out from under her feet and slowly rose. “Now you stand? Whatever happened to ‘I am your obedient harem slave’?”

  “I have never promised to be an obedient harem slave.” I gestured. “Lock the door if you’re so afraid I’ll run from you.” I poured tea for us both then sat, sipping at mine. If she used her magic to lock the door, I didn’t know. It wouldn’t matter. I wouldn’t run, not that night. Scream, perhaps, but not run. Where would I even go?

  “Full disclosure is good for the soul,” I told her. “For instance, I admit that it was my idea for Wilbur in our translation of Charlotte’s Web to have braided, white hair.”

  She laughed. “Wilbur is a pig.”

  “Yes, she is.”

  “Wilbur is a boy pig.”

  “Wilbur is short for Wilburina, but I can see how you would be confused. Who else do we know with distinctive, braided white hair?” Of course, we’d done no such thing. Yes, I had suggested it, but my harem sisters remained cowed by the Khaleesi and hadn’t yet learned the joy of Khaleesi-baiting. And so, they had happily ignored my suggestions regarding Wilbur’s appearance.

  I’d even told them that fiction and humor had long been used to challenge the powers of society. I think it was Honey Bee who observed she was sure there was something quite different I wished to do with the powers in question.

  I should have taught them all slang swear words while telling them they were polite greetings. A missed opportunity. I wondered if I could work it into advanced lessons.

  “You’re in a very strange mood,” Rhosani said.

  “There is a human expression about glass houses, and how throwing stones is a poor choice when you live in one.”

  “I’m a selfish bitch,” she blurted.

  “Huh. Don’t beat around the bush,” I said. “Just put it out there.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “And I’m engaging in sarcasm to stall while I decide what I should really say.”

  “Oh.”

  “Oh,” I echoed. I sipped from the tea. “Are we talking about how you didn’t really need to throw me in the harem, but you did it because you were afraid I wouldn’t stay?”

  “You knew?”

  “Please,” I said. “Hmm. But there’s more. The beating, or something else?”

  “The beating.”

  “All right,” I said. I studied her. “Two lingering mysteries. How did you end the war?”

  “That’s a different story.”

  “So we’ll come back to that. You muted me so I couldn’t further alienate everyone.”

  “And I didn’t want to hear you tell me how much you hated me.”

  “Ah.”

  “And because it makes you submissive.”

  “You like it when I’m submissive,” I said.

  “I’m a selfish bitch.”

  “Perhaps, but that part isn’t evidence.” I paused. “You know, four mysteries.”

  “Four?”

  “The war?” I counted on my fingers. “The beating. Why you’ve shared me. And why you barely touch me yourself. For a selfish bitch with an entire harem of slaves, you sure don’t take advantage of it.”

  “I’m afraid.”

  “You keep saying that.”

  “If I start explaining everything, where do I stop?”

  “You don’t.”

  “No, I suppose I don’t.”

  The War

  Rhosani

  Originally, the portal meant little. Men came through. No one noticed beyond the creatures that ate them. No one knows how many died in those first years.

  But the portal remained open, a portal from one arid land to another, but on this side, there was water, and not far away, mountains with a promise of a better life on the other side. Men learned the dangers of this dessert. They built here. And they began exploring westward.

  For hundreds of years, the portal wasn’t relevant to the elves. We became aware of it, but portals come; portals go. It would close, and the humans on this side would either assimilate or eventually die.

  But the portal didn’t close, and the area of technology grew. But the technology of the humans wasn’t ahead of ours, and we had magic. Let them settle in the desert. Let them explore. Let them die. Let the harpies take a few.

  They got tired of that and set a trap, wiping out half a nest on a failed raid. They used their own women as bait. Most of the harpies died to their arrows, but two were captured. They cut off their wings so they couldn’t fly and yanked their teeth from their mouths so they couldn’t bite. And then they used them cruelly until a team of elves used our bows to end their misery.

  Humans were deemed barbaric, cruel, and dangerous. But their weapons were no better than ours, and we had magic and still had numbers.

  But humans breed far more rapidly than elves. And while we didn’t know it, the portal continued to leak technology.

  Humans asserted themselves. By the dawn of the Italian Renaissance, humans controlled this region of Algonae with an iron hand. And that was before they brought guns.

  The flow of technology faded with distance. Closest to the portal, the ability to use technology was no different than on Earth. At the furthest regions, flintlock muskets still worked. By two hundred years ago, humans ruled for three months travel in any direction, although their grip at the fringes was not absolute.

  Forty years ago, I was no one, just another elf. But I formed a bold plan to close the portal. Elves had tried for a thousand years, working from this side. My plan was to travel to Earth, to find the remote side, and to attempt to close a possibly less-guarded portal from there.

  I knew little of your planet. I formed a portal. It was luck that brought us to England and not somewhere more xenophobic. But we arrived at a faery ring in the woods, and then we learned the area. There was a village, and there was a young schoolteacher. One afternoon, she arrived home on her bicycle to find me sitting on her steps.

  She let me seduce her. I stayed with her for three years, learning English from her and learning the ways of modern Earth. I gave her examples of human writing, and she was able to determine it was what humans call Old Persian, and that narrowed down the section of the world we needed to search.

  But along the way, we grew puzzled. We were shocked at the technological advancement, even forty years ago. This was prior to smart phones or the internet. The first time we saw an airplane, we wanted to know what kind of creature it was. The humans of Algonae had a few balloons, but they were quite crude. They had no airplanes. My lover took us to a war movie, carefully disguised, and we were absolutely horrified.

  And then Chasianna asked, “If they have these things, why aren’t they using them?”

  They had rifles, but they were nearly 100 years old. And they had a small number of Colt auto-load pistols, but most of their pistols were revolvers. They had no radios, and no internal combustion vehicles.

  “They lost control of this side of the portal!”

  We had quite a party when we realized that.

  It took us two decades to find the portal. We still had to close it, after all. We hoped we could take command of this side. We considered invading their palace with modern weapons and perhaps even paid human mercenaries. We considered sending a large explosive through the portal. But when we realized a mountain had collapsed on top of it, we satisfied ourselves with closing it.

  And then we waited for the technology to fade. We began pushing the humans back as their technology failed. We could have imported advanced weapons, but if we had, we would have told the humans we could, that we controlled another portal. And so we gave them absolutely no idea we had closed their portal or that we’d been to Earth.

  * * * *

  Algonae City is a highly defensible point. It is impossible to approach undetected, and by the time we had pushed human control to the city, modern technology no longer worked.

  And while we’d wrested control of much of Algonae from them, we’d suffered our own losses. Captured females weren’t necessarily executed, but captured males were. It is not misandry that keeps elven males from this city. The ones still on Algonae avoid this place.

  We could not enforce a blockade, and we could not sustain a lengthy siege. I created a bold plan. A team of us allowed ourselves to be captured, not in combat, but by chance, one at a time over several months. We expected to invade from within. My plan succeeded only through luck and, eventually, a lack of attention by people who thought our spirit was broken.

  Enania was a member of my team, as was her sister, Vianola. I will not offer details, but I’ll say this. Enania was forced to watch as Vianola was executed.

  We were, one or two at a time, brought here to the city. Most of us became the property of human soldiers. I was put into the harem in the palace. I thought I could escape. I never did.

  I won’t speak of that time. I did not have it as bad as some, but I will say this. The men were savages. You have seen the scars on Enania’s back. She is not the only one with such scars. I carry no such scars only because I did a better job convincing them my spirit was easily broken.

  And that was how I was left alone with their shah. They thought I was tightly bound, but he was drunk, and he yelled at his guards to leave us. I captured his neck in my legs, and while he beat on me and beat on me with his arms, I slowly suffocated him. I used his sword to kill his guards. I used his sword and my magic to free every elf I could find. We gave them weapons, taken from the humans, and in a single night, we took the city.

  Contrition Continued

  I’d long climbed into her lap. I didn’t know which of us needed me there more, her or me. She held me, staring ahead, while I buried my face against her shoulder.

  “I did none of that alone,” she said. “And I did not sacrifice as much as many.”

  “When we met in London?”

  “Three weeks later, I allowed myself to be captured.”

  “The portal?”

  “Closed about five years previously.”

  “How are any of you sane?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted.

  In that moment, I would have forgiven her anything, as long as she apologized.

  “My story ties into your last mystery,” she said. “I can’t touch you, not that way, as long as…”

  “As long as I call myself your slave?”

  “Yes. Or hate me. Or…”

  “Or don’t know the rest.”

  “Or don’t know the rest,” she confirmed.

  “But you can allow others to have me.”

  “The first few times were me being selfish.”

  “Getting me used to the idea of being a harem girl.”

  “Yes.”

  I pushed away until I was looking into her eyes. I had to pull her head towards me before I could do so. “I have never been angry about that. Maybe, maybe briefly, when I first realized you were drugging me. But she was nice. She was so very good. And let’s face it. I was having fabulous sex with an elf.”

  She laughed. “I think I understand.”

  “Why a harem girl?”

  “Because I’m a selfish bitch.”

  “Why a harem girl?” I asked again.

  “I’m not sure I was fully sane. I was so angry, not at you. There was no way I was letting the humans have you back. I wanted you.”

  “What happened to your human in England?”

  “She is married to a lovely woman, and they have three children,” she said. “And humans on Earth age at human speeds.” She grinned. “Otter is quite a bit older than you are.”

  “She’s in her twenties.”

  “I don’t know her exact age. She is older than you. She was born in the harem, and she has never lived anywhere else.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “Perhaps it is, but do not blame me until you ask her if she wants to leave. I tried freeing every woman there, the day after we took the city. She isn’t the only one who began sobbing, although she was the one who clung to my feet, begging not to be thrown away.”

  “And me?” I asked. “You tried to convince me to stay willingly.”

  “I couldn’t send you home. I think you understand that. I’m not sure you would have made it. But I still saw humans largely in two categories. I wanted you in the category of humans I considered mine. I kept you because I couldn’t stand for you to walk out of my life.”

  “You had no right.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “The harem?”

  “That made you absolutely mine, and it was somewhere I knew was safe, and I knew from personal experience you couldn’t escape.”

  “You had no right to any of that.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “I wouldn’t be here today if you hadn’t made those decisions.”

  “I know.”

  I laid my head back down. “The beating?”

  “It wasn’t supposed to be as bad as it was. I couldn’t stand to do it myself, or even oversee it.”

  “You outsourced, and thus you lost control over it. Fine. Why do it at all?”

  “I think I had to. I still think I had to. It kept you safe from machinations. My position wasn’t stable enough to protect you. And I absolutely couldn’t have protected you if you had done exactly what I knew you would do.”

  “Protest loudly and through a variety of passive-aggressive tactics.”

  “Everyone would have hated you. You would have been another horrible human from Earth.”

  “You’ve spent time strapped into that device.”

  “Yes.”

  “Far more than I have.”

  “Oh, probably not. Otter tickles you quite frequently.”

  “Right. I wasn’t considering those times.”

  We stayed like that for a while. She’d given me so much to consider. “You haven’t apologized.”

  “How can I apologize? It would be false. You’re here, and you wouldn’t be if I’d made other choices.”

  She was probably right. “And the selfish side of you wants me as your harem girl.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Why do you share me?”

  “Monogamy is uncommon amongst elves. And it was part of my other plan, to put you on the council.”

  “That wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t muted me. And it probably wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been cowed, either.”

  “And so I still need to ask how I can apologize.”

  I kissed her neck again. “I forgive you, anyway.” She gave a gasp. “I am – and remain – your harem slave. You know what it will take for me to stop using that word. If there are more secrets between us, you have a limited period to tell me or you better pray I never unearth them.”

  “Of course there are secrets,” she said. “Should I admit I keep a photo of you?”

  “I don’t see a lot of cameras.”

  “From Earth.”

  “Oh. Right. Do you look at it and think about touching me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Even before I came here, did you look at it and imagine me dressed like this?”

  “Yes.”

  I laughed and tried to push off her lap, but she tightened her arms. “Don’t go yet.”

  “You’ve given me a lot to think about.”

  “And I want to give you just a little more. May I come to story time tomorrow?”

  “Yes.” I snuggled back in. “Not too long.”

  “I think you should write books.”

  “That’s why you brought me a typewriter!”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not a historian. If you want a historian’s perspective, then when you bring me to Paris, we’ll find one to kidnap.”

 

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