“That’s exactly how I feel.”
“You looked slack-jawed and dazed,” observed Yvlle. “To be clear, I imagine this is very appealing for the contestant hoping for a husband who will soon be dead so she may take all his wealth and power.”
“I am dazed with the exuberance of being alive, my beloved sister.”
“Not this again.”
“It’s what happens when someone makes an attempt on one’s life,” said Arris. “And one is granted the wisdom and perspective to see one’s life anew.”
The two of them were walking back from the tranquility pond. Demelza had melted into the crowd of contestants. A few were still visiting the pavilions, but most of them were on the walkway, speaking in scandalized voices of how Thalassa, Pearl and Oona had been eliminated from the competition.
“When?”
“What did they do?”
“How did he find out?”
Arris was only half-listening, and thus he nearly crashed into a young woman on their path.
“My apologies!” he said.
The girl turned and Arris recognized Talvi.
“Your Highnesses,” she said. She curtsied to Arris and Yvlle, then lifted her chin at Yvlle. As if daring her to be hostile once more.
“I hope you find no fault in my dress today,” said Talvi.
She was simply attired in a loose gown that looked, upon closer inspection, as if it was made of sheared black ice. At first Arris thought the gown was adorned with blown glass beads or finely milled onyx, but it was in fact little beads of condensation that dripped and rolled this way and that.
“Fitting dress for a funeral,” said Yvlle. “Are you planning his in the near future?”
Talvi laughed, which only seemed to annoy Yvlle more.
“I wore this because I wished to visit the pavilion of the dusk deer and I did not want to dress so brightly as to startle them away,” said Talvi.
“I think you look exquisite,” offered Arris, but neither of them seemed to hear him.
“Ah yes, the ever diminutive dusk deer,” said Yvlle.
The dusk deer lived in a pavilion where a precise hour of time had been sewn into the trees, the leaves and the clouds. Dusk deer had once flourished all over the Isle, gently nibbling the dregs of nighttime off the grass and waking up the land. But their numbers dwindled when people began to notice the curious abilities of the dusk deers’ pelts to blend into the night and soak up the sunshine such that in the dark, one need only possess the creature’s pelt and they would no longer be lost. Their skins became precious exports and they were hunted until they no longer existed in the wild. Now they were a beloved attraction for those who visited the royal menagerie. The dusk deer were famously calm, and if one grabbed a tuft of nighttime off the grass, the deer were docile enough to eat out of one’s palms.
“I don’t find them diminutive,” said Talvi. “In fact, I find them ferocious.”
“You must have led a very sheltered existence indeed,” said Yvlle. “Were you raised in a dollhouse, by chance?”
Talvi stepped forward. “All that night sees, they consume.They are not scared. They crush it between their teeth. They might be docile, but do not ignore their appetite for destruction. They are night’s greatest enemy, after all.”
Arris grinned and started clapping. “Beautifully reasoned.”
Talvi smiled and then bowed her head. “Good day, Your Highnesses.”
Yvlle was speechless. Arris was delighted.
“Remember a few minutes ago how you were observing that I appeared slack-jawed and dazed? Well—”
Yvlle held up her hand. “This is not that. That little ice doll annoys me. Meanwhile, you seem to be in the first flush of love… but with whom, might I ask?”
Arris only smiled. His daydreams had a rabid quality to them, an effect most likely attributed to the fact that he had only narrowly escaped being eaten. Maybe it was all nothing but a burst of frantic energy, but Arris enjoyed how it conjured visions of the future with every contestant who crossed his path.
